Learning web accessibility can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to feel lost in the vast amount of information. However, it’s important to remind myself to find my way and enjoy what I’m doing. So, based on my experience and priorities, here’s my learning journey since I came back from WCEU24.
The course I took to learn the basics:
- A11Collective – Web Accessibility, the basics – this 2-hour course provides the main concept of web accessibility and testing.
- WP Accessibility (LinkedIn) by Joe Dolson—This two-hour course helped familiarize me with accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem. My takeaways were the bookmarklets and the practical workshop on testing a menu.
- Accessibility Foundation, by Collen Gratzer – helped me to clarify practical things for building an accessible website following the main elements of the website.
All these courses helped me to understand the main topics on accessibility and gain the confidence to speak with an existing client about improving accessibility for the next project we’ll have.
Essential Documentation
- WCAG 2.2, the official documentation of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- WCAG Quick Reference, a handy tool for understanding the guidelines quickly and effectively.
- WCAG 2 Guidelines and Tutorials—These cover various aspects such as page structure, menus, images, tables, forms, and carousels, providing detailed guidance on making each element accessible.
Practical Resources:
- digitala11.com – How to understand WCAG Criterion
- Equalize Digital Resources: meetups and articles with practical approaches helping to understand how to think, not just to follow checklists
- How to test a menu—Adam Lowe has an extensive YouTube video in which I learned how to test a menu (keyboard and screen reader testing) and how to connect WCAG rules with technical things.
Based on these materials, I did remediation work on my first Kadence Template – AI Tech
I understand that learning accessibility is a complex process. There are no shortcuts. It’s a long way of learning, practicing, building a workflow, speaking with others, sharing my experience and creating my approach.
The next project will be remediation for my website, and I’ll document the process.
