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Re: Accessibility for Project Managers - your thoughts?

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From: Karl Groves
Date: Sep 19, 2013 8:45AM

+1 to what Cameron said. That level of specificity is important,
especially when the dev team is new to accessibility.

One hugely useful asset to have, at the organization level, is a Style
Guide and even a component library. I recall a presentation on LeanUX from
Jeff Gothelf. Lean/ Agile isn't about doing stuff in a hurry, but rather
doing stuff efficiently. Existing resources such as a coding style
guide, visual design & branding style guide and code libraries go a long
way toward ensuring quality and agility. When generating these things,
bake accessibility into them. For instance, in the visual design style
guide, make sure the fonts, font colors, font sizes, component designs &
colors, etc. all ensure proper contrast and so on. Make sure tables are
designed so that headers exist. If the headers are sortable, make sure the
design makes the sort affordances obvious, etcl. When creating a coding
style guide, make sure it talks about binding keypress events as well as
click events on controls.

Then, instead of having to constantly talk about accessibility
requirements, etc. you can point to these assets.


On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Cameron Cundiff < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> A slight spin on what Karl said: if you have very specific requirements, be
> very specific in the feature description. For instance, if you know a
> particular WCAG guideline will apply to a feature, put that criteria in the
> acceptance/done criteria. Do not just say "it should be accessible" or "it
> should be WCAG2 compliant". The latter statements will create frustration
> and confusion for devs. In an Agile environment, devs thrive on
> specificity, and its the PMs job to narrow the feature to that point.
>
> To this point also, you should not be adding "it should have alt text".
> Universal best practices and issues of craftsmanship are not requirements,
> they're Things You Just Do™. You'll certainly see gaps in these areas at
> first, as you may occasionally see gaps fidelity to designs. If you're
> working on a Rails project, you can circumvent oversight of best practices
> to some extent by building accessibility "linting" into CI with
> capybara-accessible. I'm a maintainer of that project and I'm happy to
> answer questions.
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Karl Groves < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> > Julius,
> >
> > It really depends on your project management methodology. Henny's
> article
> > is an excellent one: Understand your requirements, make accessibility
> part
> > of requirements, make sure the requirements are met, etc.. Its sort of
> > "Project Management 101", so to speak, right? This is exactly the sort
> of
> > thing you'd find in the PMBOK guide and isn't really unique to
> > accessibility.
> >
> > If anything, that should really be the takeaway: accessibility isn't
> > unique. I remember one time I was training a bunch of developers in an
> > Agile shop. One team's Scrumaster said "Just put it in the Definition of
> > Done and it'll get done". He was right. Accessibility isn't any
> > different than any other requirement. In an Agile environment whatever
> is
> > in the DOD is what must be met before you can call a story "Done".
> >
> > The same goes for Waterfall, RUP, or whatever other methodology is in
> > place. As long as the requirements are understood, a good PM will make it
> > happen.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 11:46 PM, Julius Charles Serrano <
> > <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hello, everyone.
> > >
> > > I'd like to know your thoughts on web accessibility as it relates to
> the
> > > job of a project manager.
> > >
> > > I believe that in addition to the designers and developers, project
> > > managers have an important role in integrating and implementing
> > > accessibility in a website or a web application.
> > >
> > > I have found some truly excellent articles on this topic:
> > >
> > > Accessibility for Project Managers (by Henny Swan)
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.spotlessinteractive.com/articles/accessibility/accessibility-for-project-managers.php
> > >
> > > Project management - WCAG 2.0 - An introductory guide for Web
> developers
> > > http://www.gaates.org/aICwebdev/s4y5.php
> > >
> > > In addition to these, may I ask if you have any idea or pragmatic
> > > approach that is helpful in terms of web accessibility from a project
> > > management point of view?
> > >
> > > Thank you very much.
> > >
> > > Julius
> > >
> > >
> > > > > > > > > > > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Karl Groves
> > www.karlgroves.com
> > @karlgroves
> > http://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgroves
> > Phone: +1 410.541.6829
> > > > > > > >
> > > >



--

Karl Groves
www.karlgroves.com
@karlgroves
http://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgroves
Phone: +1 410.541.6829