Designing for Accessibility

As part of a new project we’re working on, I prepared an accessibility cheatsheet to get the team started…

We will be compliant with WCAG 2.0 Level AA and Section 508.

• Section 508 lays out accessibility standards required in the US and is documented on the US Access Board.
• WCAG lays out accessibility standards developed through the W3C — as such, it is a more internationally recognised standard. The original WCAG 1.0 standard has been superseded by the newer WCAG 2.0 standard.

While they are broadly similar, there’s a few differences between Section 508 and WCAG.

WCAG 2.0 is a more complete and thorough standard than Section 508 as outlined in a comparison of both standards by the Access Board. We should strive for WCAG 2.0 compliance for levels A and levels AA.

The W3C provides a very clear guide on how to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA (filtering set to remove Level AAA).

We will use a light-weight process

The following three step process should ensure continuous learning and validation against accessibility standards we decide to meet. The process acknowledges that there is a design and a development component to this process:

1. We design & develop against the WCAG 2.0 Level AA specification
2. After every sprint, we test compliance using a tool such as SortSite by PowerMapper
3. We maintain an accessibility compliance backlog with stories that will either be added to the next sprint for ‘immediate fixing’ or stay in the backlog for later, when sensible