Experience of disability workshop

Understanding how people with disabilities use web technologies is important in purchasing accessible products and services, and creating experiences that not only meet accessibility standards, but are also usable by people with disabilities. Interpreting accessibility standards is easier when you have an understanding of the needs of people with disabilities and the technologies they use to help them. You will learn about the demographics of disability and the built-in operating system accessibility features in Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, including sticky keys, mouse keys, color adjustments, magnifiers and screen readers. You will learn about disability through a hands-on disability simulation to give a first-hand experience on some of the ways people with disabilities interact with web content and how the design of web content can directly affect the usability of people with disabilities. Common assistive technologies will be demonstrated, including speech recognition systems, screen magnifiers (e.g., ZoomText for Windows and Zoom for macOS) and screen readers (e.g., VoiceOver for macOS, NVDA for Windows) for you to appreciate how not being able to use a pointing device, see and read computer screens affects interaction with web content. You will be encouraged to try the assistive technologies on your own device to learn how to start them, use them and turn them off. The concepts of Universal Design will be introduced, including Tom Thomas Tobin's One Plus approach to creating online content that is not only more accessible to students with disabilities, but makes learning easier for everyone. The session will conclude with an introduction to important accessibility standards, including the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Federal Section 508 requirements, W3C Accessible Rich Internet Accessibility (ARIA) and associated authoring practices and the W3C ARIA in HTML specifications. Accessibility standards for digital books, including PDF Universal Access and dPub Accessibility guidelines will also be reviewed.