Meetup Build an Accessible Post

HOST:
We have Peteris Jurcenko, CEO, UX designer and accessibility expert at SIA Turn Digital. He’s giving us a presentation on the future of accessibility sorry, the future of accessibility statement. And that will be the last lightning round talk we have for the WordPress Accessibility Day. All right Peter, let’s bring it home for us.

PETERIS JURCENKO:
Hello, my name is Peteris and four years ago [speaking foreign language]we created an initiative [speaking foreign language]which means accessibility dot LV in Latvian. We do research and training on accessibility but we have also create practical tools. For example, schoolofvp.com [?]is a platform based on WordPress for school to create accessible websites and field days.

We have also created accessibility statement generation plug in. And I will tell you in more details about this plug-in. But for beginning, what is accessibility statement? I will describe it as a page on the website that tells you what is accessible and what is not accessible on this website. And who to contact in case of problems.

Usually, the link on this page is in the footer somewhere next the privacy policy. Here you can see examples and links on the European Parliament go UK and the US presidents page. Why provide an accessibility statement? In some situation, you may be required to provide an accessibility statement such as public institution in countries that implement the [unintelligible 02:37]web accessibility directed.

The main reasons are to show users that you care about accessibility and about them. Provide information which content on your page is accessible and which is not and how to deal with it. Publish information about accessibility information and contact information if users need help with contact accessibility. Demonstrate commitment to accessibility and to social responsibility. What to include in an accessibility statement? It depends on the country and regulation. Some countries have templates.

Some examples include the results of web assimilation. Web accessibility initiative recommends include: commitment to accessibility, which accessibility standards such as WCAG 2. 1and which level A to AAA is applied, conduct information and response time in case users encounter problems. It’s also good practice to provide information about any known limitation in your website to avoid frustration of your users.

For example, old videos do not have subtitles. Measures taken by your organization to ensure accessibility. For example, websites assimilation and user methodology. Technical prerequisites such as supported web browsers. Environments in which the content has been tested to work and also references to apply national and local laws and policies.

Is accessibility statement acquired? It depends, on which country or website operates in which sector your organization operates. For example, In Latin, our government implements European government directive which is mandatory in the public institutions in the publicly owned companies but it is not mandatory to private companies yet. On the website, web accessibility initiative you can see regulations in every country but this information is mostly from 2018and they plan to start publishing the updates in this November.

Here you can see example of Nordic insurance company. This is a private company that operates in seven countries with different regulation. You can see the link related to accessibility is only free on their websites. It is interesting that Apple defines accessibility as Apple value, but this is not translated in every language.

For example, in Latin websites only privacy was mentioned as a value. So, if you are planning to include accessibility statement on your website is there a tool or generator which can help you generate and accessibility statement. First dimension is web accessibility initiative accessibility statement generator. You can fill in a simple form and generate a plain HTML file. All fields are fill in examples.

Another publicly available tool and accessibility and ability statement generator from Portugal’s government system. It requires more detailed information including useability test for people with disabilities. As a result, you get an HTML file which you can copy and paste to your website. There is a similar tool of Belgian government. And a very nice tool is from [unintelligible]. All tools provide form to be filled in and generated at HTML file.

There are some issues with this approach. Information is either too general for the needs of different countries or to specific if the tool is designed for specific country. It would be nice to adapt this tool for different countries but it’s not possible as they are not plug-ins. Some of the generation provide source code but you need to run and the host this tool somewhere. As they do not have central plug-in and installation.

All generators provided result as HTML block or file. Which means it is hard to update next year and problems to copy paste in machine readable format. And yes, this is not the WordPress way. We tried to solve previously mentioned issues in the WordPress way and one of them is a WordPress plug-in and I will demonstrate it later.

Another approach is create and publish accessibility statement for each country as a pattern. Which pattern will not solve all the problems with machine readable format. For example, if you have a planned update syntax or ID you can do it only for new content not for previously published. The plug-in update you can improve machine readable afterwards. What to expect from WordPress plug-in. Provide information and links to local regulation website, provide tax examples, description, edit not create, fill some custom fields, result work in any theme, provide only semantic content not style, result in machine readable format, content can be easily updated like normal page, ability to customize template content from WordPress admin not only from code.

Let’s see how it works. When you activate accessibility statement plug-in, it will create a page. Accessibility statement because this plug-in is in Latvian [unintelligible ]when you edit this page, and use ACF if you have it to use your home. If you’re not have it to use in ACF which was available open source previously. Here you can fill in the form. You have a link to local guidelines where you can get information out to check and what to include in this accessibility statement. And it works like normal WordPress page.

You can update, you can preview changes. And for example, here it creates semantic HTML inside the WordPress and if you change theme it works with any theme if you change it works with another team as well because it’s only HTML without style. What we get in this HTML? We get machine readable text as well.

And if you want to change this template, to change this machine readable you can do it from WordPress illustration as well go to the settings accessibility statement settings and here is text and the classes are specific text for creation. What I think about future of WordPress accessibility statement actually it’s two ways. We like plug-in one or many plug-ins and new patterned library. I think pattern library is easy way but you cannot update some things after you publish this statement. In plug-in way it’s possible to update the machine readable text and information with plug-in updates afterwards. And yeah, if some content change plug-ins more better way to use in WordPress. Thank you, that’s all for me.