1. What is IT accessibility and why should you care? April 2017
Sarah E Bourne
Director of IT Accessibility
MassIT’s mission is to drive the digital business of state government to meet the continually evolving needs of constituents, schools, businesses, and local government.

2. What is IT accessibility?
IT Accessibility is making sure our online systems and services can be used by everybody, especially people with disabilities.

3. Disability is relative
Calvin and Hobbes comics by Bill Watterson ©, as posted at

4. Computers and the Internet open doors for people with disabilities
Why Accessibility?
Computers and the Internet open doors for people with disabilities
57% of computer users benefit from accessible technology, even though many do not consider themselves “disabled”
The things that make it convenient for you make it possible for people with disabilities
Picture from Inclusive Microsoft Design, © Microsoft 2016 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)
Details! Videos at Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore the Impact and Benefits for Everyone
Learn more: Videos at Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore the Impact and Benefits for Everyone 3

5. Why Accessibility?
What most people with disabilities want is to be as independent as possible
You can’t be independent if you don’t have your own income
With disabilities
Without disabilities
Labor force participation
19.5%
68.2%
Unemployment rate
11.0%
4.9%
US Dept. of Labor January 2017
US Dept. of Labor January 2017

6. The Governor thinks it’s important, too
Governor Baker declaring March as Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month at a State House Ceremony. (Twitter)
Declared March as Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month

7. It’s not just the right thing to do…
Commonwealth
Massachusetts Constitution, Article of Amendment CXIV
Massachusetts General Laws
Ch. 93, section 103
Ch. 151B
Ch. 272 section 98
Federal
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 42 U.S.C. §2000d and its implementing regulations
Titles I, II, and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. §794d Applies to federal agencies and other entities receiving grant money from federal agencies. Our standards are harmonized with Section 508 regulations
Section 255 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of Requires telecommunications service providers and equipment manufacturers, including interconnected voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), to ensure that their services and equipment are accessible to individuals with disabilities. We need to make sure providers of telecomm goods and services are in compliance.

8. How accessible IT works
Assistive technologies (AT)
Software:
screen readers
Magnification
speech recognition
Hardware: special keyboards or mice, single switch
Interact with operating system accessibility interfaces – APIs
Applications that make use of the accessibility APIs can then work with the AT

9. The web was designed to be accessible
Browsers use the API, so our job is to make sure we follow the specifications for building web pages and applications
HTML, CSS: the mark-up and presentation for webpages
ARIA: HTML extension for adding accessibility features
WCAG: Web Content Authoring Guidelines – do's and don't's for authoring accessible HTML
It's usually when you get fancy that accessibility gets broken:
Using the wrong mark-up so it will look a certain way
Writing your own code to replace native features to look or behave a certain way

10. Not everybody needs to know everything
Executive stakeholders: Top-down communication, governance, and culture
Program, product, and project managers: Know who is supposed to know what and when what kind of testing needs to happen
Architect: Accessibility support in selected libraries and frameworks
Designer: Colors, fonts, identification of content flow and decorative- only elements
Developer: Correct use of HTML/CSS/JavaScript
Content providers: Correct heading levels, provide alternative text
Responsibilities by role:
Learn more: Responsibilities by role (DOCX)

11. Putting your stuff on the web
Use standard features of Mass.Gov – accessibility has been built in as much as possible
Use the right format
A web page has the best accessibility
If posting Word or PDF
Are you SURE it can't be posted as a web page?
Make sure it's as accessible as it can be
Get training in how to make them accessible
If it's data, consider posting it in a data-friendly way: CSV or Excel, for example
Use the right format:
Tree as PDF:
Learn more: Use the right format and Decision Tree as PDF

12. Buy accessible products and services
Test before you buy – whenever possible
Put accessibility requirements in contracts
MassIT/OSD IT Acquisition Accessibility Compliance Program – use required language and RFx templates
Test during implementation and/or development
Create a process for assessing and prioritizing problems
Audit testing at end
Good contract management
Assessing and Prioritizing:

13. Create processes for assessing and prioritizing problems
Design, develop, deploy
Test early and often
Find and fix as many defects as early as possible
Make sure an audit test does not turn up surprises
Learn from results: continuous reduction of defects
Create processes for assessing and prioritizing problems
Audit testing at end
Assessing and Prioritizing:
Learn more:
Accessibility testing
Assessing and Prioritizing

14. Accessibility in an Agile world
Ways agile methodologies can undermine accessibility:
Decentralized ownership can weaken top-down mandates
Teams control their own backlogs - Shiny new features can be more likely to win out over accessibility fixes
Ways agile methodologies can improve accessibility:
More incentives for integration of accessibility responsibilities
Better mechanisms for ensuring testing happens early and often
User testing possible much earlier

15. IT Accessibility on Commonwiki
Learn more
IT Accessibility on Commonwiki
How-to
Internet Resources
AT licenses
ITS61 statewide contract for IT Accessibility Services
Audit testing (Category A)
Consulting (Category B)
Document remediation (Category C)
Training (Category D)
Multimedia captioning (Category E)
Custom accommodations (Category F)

16. Questions?
Thank you.