Advanced accessibility: ARIA and dynamic webpages
Date: Wednesday, May 30, 2018, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Location: St. Louis and Kansas City room, first floor
Are you a web developer or do you create web content?
Do you use JavaScript to make dynamic user interface?
If so, you should be concerned with making those dynamic elements accessible and usable to as many as possible. One of the most powerful tools currently available for making webpages accessible is ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications specification. However, as Spider-Man has taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. The first rule of ARIA is that no ARIA is always superior to bad ARIA.
This workshop will teach you the basics for responsibly leveraging the full power of ARIA to make great accessible web pages. Through several hands-on exercises, participants will come to understand the purpose and power of ARIA and how to apply it to a variety of different dynamic web elements. Topics will include semantic HTML, ARIA landmarks and roles, expanding/collapsing content and modal dialog. Participants will also be taught some basic use of the screen reader NVDA for use in accessibility testing.
Finally, the lessons will emphasize learning how to keep on learning as HTML, JavaScript and ARIA continue to evolve and expand.
Speakers
Katherine Deibel
Inclusion and accessibility librarian, Syracuse University Libraries
Katherine “Kate” Deibel has had a varied career in academia working within and across many disciplines, including library technology, computer science, education, disability, design engineering, technology adoption and digital literacies. She has presented multiple times on a gamut of topics ranging across disciplinarity, teaching methods, accessibility, comics and library technologies. Kate earned her PhD in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington in 2011 with a multidisciplinary study of the social and technological factors that hinder adoption of reading technologies among adults with dyslexia.
Currently, Kate is the inclusion and accessibility librarian at Syracuse University Libraries where she is spearheading multiple efforts to raise disability access throughout libraries and the library community. Kate lives in Syracuse, New York, with a crazy tuxedo kitty named Francie, cooks way too spicy food and deals with chronic insomnia due to regular bingeing on webcomic archives.