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Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)

From: Julius Serrano
Date: Thu, Nov 19 2020 1:45PM
Subject: efficient accessibility audit process
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Hi all. I hope you are well.

I'd like to get your thoughts on an efficient audit process based on
your experience.

By saying audit process, I am referring to checking an already finished
site / set of pages, identifying the issues based on WCAG, and providing
recommendations. Efficient to me means there are no duplications of work
being done and a process that involves the entire team for maximum
productivity.

I recognise that an audit process needs to include the entire team, and
not just the person doing screen reader testing. Generally the team
consists of a business analyst, a front end developer, a QA / screen
reader  tester, and the accessibility program manager.

May I ask if anyone has performed audits with this type of setting and
resources/expertise? Basically, what I'm needing ideas about is the
steps in between the two points:

* Point A: We receive audit work from a client
* We do the steps in the audit process
* Point B: We submit the audit report to the client.


 Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you. Please let me know if
you need more info regarding this question.

Julius

From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Nov 19 2020 2:12PM
Subject: Re: efficient accessibility audit process
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I don't accept your premise that you will maximise productivity by involving the entire team. I would expect that to minimise productivity.

For maximum productivity, we get one person to do all the work. Obviously, they need all the necessary skills, so we recruit people who do. Why would you not do that? The one exception is that we sometimes get someone junior to do the colour contrast analysis - it doesn't take long to teach almost anyone.

Occasionally, the timescale means we have to put more than one tester on a project, in which case they form a self-managing team with one tester taking the lead role.

Is there anything about your context that means you can't do this?

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd

From: Peter Shikli
Date: Fri, Nov 20 2020 3:08PM
Subject: Re: Efficient Accessibility Audit Process
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Julius,

Your question is clear and simple, but the right answer is not. It begins by writing down the steps of the process into a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). A verbal process by someone with lots of experience is not an acceptable alternate. An objective, structured, commented VPAT with each failure condition described in detail is key. For example, the VPAT for the Trusted Tester program includes 81 specific failure conditions that take our analysts a few months to master.

And when that is done, we have an internal step that takes each VPAT violation and requires the analyst to make clear remediation instructions to the web designer. That step informs the VPAT steps to be designed to be practical, and closes the loop for the remediation analyst to be a member of a design team. Until then, involving other design team members is not a great use of time.

This cycle can and should be done throughout the design process from requirements documents through wire frames, mockups, and prototypes -- but only at the end of each such cycle does a trained accessibility analyst involve the rest of the team.

Cheers,
Peter Shikli
Access2online Inc.

From: Julius Serrano
Date: Sun, Nov 22 2020 11:48AM
Subject: Re: efficient accessibility audit process
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Hi Steve.

Thanks for sharing your insights.

My goal is to learn how we can make accessibility audits a team effort.

The intention behind it is the idea if more people are involved in the
company, accessibility would be recognised and supported by more people.

And, as I am open to other ideas, I truly value your thoughts on how
efficient it will be if only one person was performing the audit.

Thanks again.


Julius



 z

On 20/11/2020 10:12 am, Steve Green wrote:
> I don't accept your premise that you will maximise productivity by involving the entire team. I would expect that to minimise productivity.
>
> For maximum productivity, we get one person to do all the work. Obviously, they need all the necessary skills, so we recruit people who do. Why would you not do that? The one exception is that we sometimes get someone junior to do the colour contrast analysis - it doesn't take long to teach almost anyone.
>
> Occasionally, the timescale means we have to put more than one tester on a project, in which case they form a self-managing team with one tester taking the lead role.
>
> Is there anything about your context that means you can't do this?
>
> Steve Green
> Managing Director
> Test Partners Ltd
>
>
>

From: Julius Serrano
Date: Sun, Nov 22 2020 11:56AM
Subject: Re: Efficient Accessibility Audit Process
← Previous message | Next message →

Hi Peter.


Thank you very much. Today I'll do more reading on

An objective, structured, and commented VPAT. I believe this is going to be useful for the audit cycle I'm working with the team to develop.

Julius



On 21/11/2020 11:08 am, Peter Shikli wrote:
> Julius,
>
> Your question is clear and simple, but the right answer is not. It begins by writing down the steps of the process into a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). A verbal process by someone with lots of experience is not an acceptable alternate. An objective, structured, commented VPAT with each failure condition described in detail is key. For example, the VPAT for the Trusted Tester program includes 81 specific failure conditions that take our analysts a few months to master.
>
> And when that is done, we have an internal step that takes each VPAT violation and requires the analyst to make clear remediation instructions to the web designer. That step informs the VPAT steps to be designed to be practical, and closes the loop for the remediation analyst to be a member of a design team. Until then, involving other design team members is not a great use of time.
>
> This cycle can and should be done throughout the design process from requirements documents through wire frames, mockups, and prototypes -- but only at the end of each such cycle does a trained accessibility analyst involve the rest of the team.
>
> Cheers,
> Peter Shikli
> Access2online Inc.
>

From: Dan Smith
Date: Sun, Nov 22 2020 12:52PM
Subject: Re: efficient accessibility audit process (Julius Serrano)
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Hi Julius,

In my view, educating the wider company about web accessibility is a very
different goal to coming up with an efficient audit process.

I attended a webinar for Techweek 2020 in July, which had some very
relevant presentations.

Tamsin Ewing from DIA described her project to make the NZ Government's Web
Standards relevant to web teams - i.e. not just the Front End Developer or
Accessibility Specialist.

There's a captioned recording of her webinar presentation on YouTube at
https://youtu.be/t-pQNFkxPFE?tP07.

Gareth Ford Williams, Head of UX Design at the BBC, talked about creating
an army of Volunteer Accessibility Champions. The volunteers made sure that
every sprint in the large company had an accessibility review.

Additionally, his team came up with a shared design language to be used by
the company. He reasoned that this would remove the need for audits,
because accessibility would be considered up front. He started projects
with inconvenient questions like "who are you going to exclude".

Perhaps this is similar ground to what a VPAT would cover?

There's a captioned recording of his webinar presentation on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-pQNFkxPFE&tF8

I also think communicating your lived experience to teams is key in
developing empathy and a drive to self-educate about web accessibility. In
my experience, web teams live in a bit of a bubble, which needs some not so
gentle popping.

Cheers,
Dan


On Mon, 23 Nov 2020 at 08:03, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

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> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of WebAIM-Forum digest..."
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: PDF resize (L Snider)
> 2. Re: efficient accessibility audit process (Julius Serrano)
> 3. Re: Efficient Accessibility Audit Process (Julius Serrano)
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: L Snider < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2020 12:54:35 -0400
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF resize
> For your EPUB question, yes overall EPUBs give more choice than PDFs. For
> example, you can change the font, font size, etc. EPUBs are basically a
> website in an EPUB box, so they are far more versatile. The issue you are
> talking about in terms of zoom, as well as using PDFs on mobile, were major
> factors against PDF until a couple of months ago when Adobe finally (after
> eons) made them a bit better on mobile and zoom.
>
> Use of EPUBs will be more, because one can get a good module for Word, and
> produce them in Google Docs, etc. However, in my personal view, EPUBs are
> still problematic because of the readers...Almost all the readers are not
> accessible in some way (except two), major issue. Microsoft pulled support
> for EPUBs through EDGE, and in my view that made things much harder...it
> was fairly accessible, and if you owned a Windows machine, you likely had
> EDGE. That change in my view was a game changer, in the wrong direction,
> for EPUB use. Plus the PR for EPUBs is harder, business has not
> traditionally used them for many reasons. I believe we need more uptake by
> large business (not just IBM) to get this going more.
>
> Hope that helps!
>
> Cheers
>
> Lisa
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 3:51 AM Edelényi Zsolt < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thank you for your contribution so far.
> >
> > Jonathan:
> > > you could use the zoom feature in the viewer to increase text size up
> to
> > 200% of the default -- even with scrolling in two directions.
> >
> > Jerra:
> > > If you look at the "failures" for 1.4.4, basically if enlarging text
> > causes
> > > things to become unreadable by pushing them out of view or making
> things
> > > overlap, that's a problem.
> >
> > Duff:
> > > Not sure what you are referring to here. PDF can be reflowed in an
> > interoperable manner via Tagged PDF, but thus far few applications
> leverage
> > Tagged PDF for reflow purposes.
> >
> > To summarize:**You *can enlarge***PDF but*need**scrolling*. You cannot
> > reflowed without special technology.
> >
> > Question: *This**means success or failure of 1.4.4. in case of PDFs? *
> >
> > I am also wondering, if ePUB is better choice than PDF for accessible
> > publications. What do you think?
> >
> > Zsolt
> >
> >
> >
> > > > > > > > > >
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Julius Serrano < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2020 07:48:27 +1300
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] efficient accessibility audit process
>
> Hi Steve.
>
> Thanks for sharing your insights.
>
> My goal is to learn how we can make accessibility audits a team effort.
>
> The intention behind it is the idea if more people are involved in the
> company, accessibility would be recognised and supported by more people.
>
> And, as I am open to other ideas, I truly value your thoughts on how
> efficient it will be if only one person was performing the audit.
>
> Thanks again.
>
>
> Julius
>
>
>
> z
>
> On 20/11/2020 10:12 am, Steve Green wrote:
> > I don't accept your premise that you will maximise productivity by
> involving the entire team. I would expect that to minimise productivity.
> >
> > For maximum productivity, we get one person to do all the work.
> Obviously, they need all the necessary skills, so we recruit people who do.
> Why would you not do that? The one exception is that we sometimes get
> someone junior to do the colour contrast analysis - it doesn't take long to
> teach almost anyone.
> >
> > Occasionally, the timescale means we have to put more than one tester on
> a project, in which case they form a self-managing team with one tester
> taking the lead role.
> >
> > Is there anything about your context that means you can't do this?
> >
> > Steve Green
> > Managing Director
> > Test Partners Ltd
> >
> >
> >