This year I attended the second time in the Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) competition. My experience at the 2024 edition can be found on this article.
A Few Things About the AIR
The Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) is an annual competition (hackathon) organized by Knowbility to promote web accessibility. This program brings together diverse participants to design and develop accessible websites or applications for nonprofits, artists, and community organizations over the course of eight weeks.
Why AIR Was Special for Me
The first year was a great experience in learning and creating long-term relationships with the team and the client. So I decided I can’t miss this year’s opportunity to meet other like-minded people passionate about accessibility, to create a meaningful project as part of a team, and to learn new perspectives about creating accessible websites.
A new experience
Our team’s task was to redesign a website for a non-profit organization over 8 weeks. The main challenge was to collaborate asynchronously across different time zones. The team was larger than last year, and everyone was free to choose how they wanted to contribute.
- Team captain: Coordinated with the client and the AIR team to collect information and feedback and many more tasks I didn’t know about. This was the most exhausting role.
- Project manager: organized the tasks and the meetings for the team along the timeline and helped to fix a few JS issues.
- Designer: created the website’s design style system and the design for the homepage and provided feedback on how to align the other pages to the same style.
- Developer: implemented the design with WordPress, created the design for secondary pages, and implemented the remediation feedback.
- Tester: tested the pages according to the Judges’ Form.
- Content creator: provided Alt description for the images.
- Coach: helped the team in different stages along the way.
We had only a few meetings to get to know each other and review milestones. Most of the work was done asynchronously, with clear tasks assigned in the Basecamp.
My role was to implement the mockup design into WordPress pages and to design the remaining pages in the block editor based on the design system provided. The pages were simpler than last year, so the work and involvement were much lighter overall.
The Process
We built the homepage and sent it for testing by some team members and a blind person. After addressing the feedback, we continued to create the remaining pages. The second round of testing was completed at the end of the workflow, along with a few small remediation tasks.
My takeaways
The main takeaway was enjoying working in a team spread around the world for an accessible website. This year’s AIR timeline overlapped with the interview process for Automattic, so I wasn’t able to go the extra mile like last year, but I still enjoyed the result very much.
It was a great team effort, and everyone was involved with dedication and passion.
The new website will be launched soon, and I’ll add it here.
