Founded in 2013, The A11y Project is an open-source, community-driven effort aiming to make it easier to implement accessibility on the web. Four main values guide the site; The A11y Project is open, communal, approachable, and authoritative. Similar to the mentality and the work many of VSA International Network members are doing, The A11y Project site emphasizes the importance of the accessibility community, “the web accessibility industry is small, but welcoming—we’re all in this together. Our successes build off each other’s efforts, and are performed in the service of others. We highlight people doing good work.”
This month we spoke to one of The A11y Project’s maintainers, Eric Bailey, who helps out with the day-to-day maintenance and operations.
Q: What is the origin story of The A11y Project?
EB: At the time of the site's creation, knowledge of web accessibility was even less commonplace than it is now. I believe Dave Rupert started the site as he began to explore the topic, in order to help other developers become aware of it and implement it on their projects. The site is deliberately open source—we believe that anyone should be able to learn about, and help contribute to the web accessibility community.
Q: Can you explain how The A11y Project creates its resources and checklist?
EB: Our checklist is built from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) success criteria. Each checklist item is phrased in such a way that it targets common accessibility issues, and the way they usually manifest as web content. By working through the checklist, you can address many common web accessibility issues.
Our resources are submitted by the community and vetted by the site maintainers. Anyone is free to add theirs!
Q: How do you ensure these resources are being used (and effectively)?
EB: It is our hope that by centralizing these resources we are able to help individuals and organizations discover they exist, and more importantly make them aware of the concerns that led to their creation. While we cannot ensure the resources are utilized, it is our hope that promoting them helps to create more awareness, and therefore adoption.
Q: Earlier this year, many institutions, including galleries, theaters and museums, were served with website-access lawsuits. What do you think are the largest barriers for cultural institutions in creating accessible website experiences?
EB: Vendor adoption is a large part of this issue. Cultural institutions should be asking about agency awareness of, and compliance with, web accessibility guidelines. Checking for Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs) and self-disclosed accessibility statements are a good start. So is reviewing their portfolio of prior work.
Making WCAG AA-level compliance mandatory in contracts is also important, as well as following up to ensure these guidelines are being met. As an example, the State of California is currently involved in a lawsuit where they paid 66 million dollars for a state park reservation system that was promised by their vendors to be accessible. It was discovered that this was not in fact true. Accountability is critical for this kind of work, and a good way to help ensure it is to involve people with disabilities in as many phases of the project as possible.
Q: What are best practices for ensuring a website is accessible?
EB: In the abstract, familiarizing yourself with the theory driving website accessibility standards is a good place to start. Understand that the rules and guidelines are there to help protect the civil rights of the people who rely on assistive technology to browse the web, a medium that is becoming more and more necessary for living everyday life.
In the immediate, the more you can proactively address these concerns before they become issues, the better. Incorporate resources like automated code checkers, color contrast and reading level analyzers into your workflows. Testing how your website works with actual assistive technology is also important, ideally with the help of someone who uses it on a regular basis.
Q: Art of Access links to The A11y Project as a useful resource - do you know of any cultural institutions that are using The A11y Project as a tool or have you worked with any specifically?
EB: It's always nice to see web design and development blogs, documentation wikis, courses, and social media posts linking to The A11y Project as a reference. Our analytics report a decent amount of hits from Blackboard, which is great. As far as cultural institutions, I'm not aware of any specifically linking to us, but we'd love the opportunity to collaborate with them!