1. Tips for incorporating
accessibility into your product
An “unconference” talk
Amanda Nance, @amandaux
Senior Usability Analyst at Sage
June 7, 2012
Usability Professionals’ Association

2. Four broad categories
1. Educate the product team
2. Get buy in for allocating developer time to
accessibility
3. Create checklists and processes
4. The secret sauce

3. 1. Educate
• Educate designers
– Accessibility starts with good design!
– Design-specific issues include text size, color contrast,
multimedia captions, etc.
• Teach QA how to test for accessibility
– Have QA team include test plans about accessibility

4. 1. Educate
• Educate the development and QA teams further
– Show virtual seminars
– Share top accessibility resources such as WebAIM.org
• Name a developer the accessibility expert
– Typically, user experience practitioners can’t provide all of the programming
advice that developers need. A developer can create coding guidelines for
your product’s language and be a resource to other developers.
– Naming a developer as the expert may make them feel more responsible and
engaged in accessibility issues.
• Show a test of your product with a disabled user

5. 2. Get buy in for developer time
• If developers aren’t given time to learn about accessibility,
you will always have difficulty
• There are many resources on how to get buy in, and
different arguments work for different stakeholders.
– It’s the right thing to do
– It takes minimal effort to be accessible, especially if accessibility
is considered up front
– Fear of bad press if product is not accessible
– It's the law (depending on your country and industry)

6. 3. Create checklists and processes
• Make checklists specific to each role (e.g.,
developer checklist, designer checklist).
– Start with a shorter, high priority checklist. Accessibility
novices may be overwhelmed with a long, thorough
accessibility checklist.
– Exclude “one-time code” from the short checklist. For
example, skip navigationand landmark code should be
included a reusable template. Therefore, developers don’t
need to remember it for each separate feature.

7. 3. Create checklists and processes
• Sit with developers to check for accessibility
– My team reviews a new feature before the developer
checks in code. This review is a great time to do a quick
check for accessibility issues.
• Send developers the code or “how to” resources
– Developers appreciate anything you can do to help them
learn accessibility or meet accessibility goals more quickly.

8. 3. Create checklists and processes
• Include accessibility requirements in the design
specification and/or UI style guide
– For example, guidelines for using H1, H2, and fieldset
• When you review the product with the team, check for
accessibility issues (e.g., during the sprint demo)
• Include an accessibility check in developer code
reviews
• Write defects for accessibility issues

9. 4. The secret sauce
• Lather. Rinse. Repeat if necessary.
• In other words, you may have to remind your
team about accessibility.
• And remind them again.
• And again.
• Be encouraging and patient with your team.
Forming new habits is difficult.