The Future of Web Accessibility and ADA Compliance

Michael Fairchild

@mfairchild365

About me

• Web applications engineer at the University of Nebraska
• Web accessibility is my passion
• Always learning
• Won 1st place in the 2018 openAIR competition for https://acbnebraska.org/

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In this talk

• Provide a brief introduction to web accessibility
• Discuss standards, laws, and regulations
• With a focus on how they might change in the future
• Provide some strategies for web accessibility

Why is accessibility important?

At least 15% of the world population has a disability.

That is over a billion people!

YOU will have a disability at some point

The Spectrum of Disabilities

Major categories of disabilities

• Blind
• Low vision
• Colorblind
• Deaf
• Deafblind
• Dexterity/motor disabilities
• Speech disabilities
• Cognitive disabilities
• Reading disabilities
• Seizure disorders

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Other considerations

• Someone might have many disabilities
• Disabilities might be long-term, temporary, or situational
• Disabilities often have different levels of severities
• Chances of disabilities increase with age

Persona: Frank has hearing loss

Barriers:

• No captions on videos
• Cues that rely only on audio

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Solutions Assistive technology used

• Hearing aid
• Captions
• Visual cues

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Frank is a local author who likes to hash out ideas with other authors online.

Persona: Samantha has a reading disorder

Barriers:

• Complex or stylized fonts that she can't change
• Time limits

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Solutions and Assistive technology used:

• Screen reader software
• Custom stylesheets
• Extended time limits

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Samantha has dyslexia, but she is passionate about civil rights and is studying to become a lawyer.

Persona: Stephen Hawking had a motor disability

Barriers:

• Requiring mouse interactions
• Keyboard traps
• Setting time limits

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Solutions and Assistive technology used

• Alternative input devices
• Sip and puff, switch input, eye tracking, movement detection, voice input/control

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Stephen Hawking had ALS and passed away in 2018. He was a leading theoretical physicist and cosmologist.

Persona: Greg is blind

Barriers:

• Dependency on visual cues
• Not providing information through semantic HTML (name, role, and value)
• Dependency on mouse input

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Solutions and Assistive technology used

• Screen reader software
• Refreshable Braille Display
• Audio descriptions
• Transcripts

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Greg is a psychologist. He keeps up to date with new research online.

Standards

WCAG

• Web Content Authoring Guidelines
• W3C Recommendation
• Covers things like
• Perceivable
• Operable
• Understandable
• Robust
• Levels A, AA, AAA

Example�1.4.3 - Contrast (minimum) Level AA

• 1 = Principle 1 (perceivable
• 4 = Guideline 4 (Distinguishable)
• 3 = Success criteria 3 (Contrast (Minimum)

"Accessibility Supported" requirement

• A WCAG conformance requirement
• Your code must be "supported by users' assistive technologies as well as the accessibility features in browsers and other user agents"
• In other words: coding to a technical standard isn't good enough

Technical standards don't always "work"

Explicit:�<label for="input-id">Explicit label</label>�<input type="text" id="input-id" />

Implicit:�<label>Explicit label� <input type="text" />�</label>

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ARIA

• Accessible Rich Internet Applications
• W3C Recommendation
• Lets you inform screen readers about non-standard code (name, role, value)
• First rule: use it carefully
• ARIA authoring practices

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Example:�<div id="volume"� role="slider"� tabindex="0"� class="slider"� aria-valuemin="0"� aria-valuenow="0"� aria-valuemax="100"� aria-labelledby="volume-label">

https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/#slider

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ATAG

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines
• W3C Recommendation
• Blogs, comments, CMSs, etc
• Says
• 1) The authoring interface needs to be accessible
• 2) The authoring interface needs to produce accessible output

Where standards are lacking

• Cognitive disabilities
• Mobile devices
• Dynamic JavaScript based content such as single page applications
• Announce a change of context
• WCAG is hard to grasp, understand, and test

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Or "how standards will change"

Legal

I am not a lawyer

This is not legal advice

Accessibility is a civil right

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR)

• The OCR and DOJ handles complaints
• Might have authority to take funding away from you
• Meeting WCAG might not mean you are civil rights complaint

Compliance vs Universal Design

Compliance

Universal Design

Where to look for laws

• Written Law
• Regulations (standards to help enforce law)
• Case law
• past rulings that count as 'precedent'
• Settlements and resolution agreements
• Last resort - might indicate how laws will change in the future
• Should be considered 'best practices' and not 'letter of the law'

Laws: Federal

• Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
• Access is a civil right
• Title III - "place of public accommodation"
• No case law for the web
• No regulations or technology specific standards
• Rehabilitation Act (1973)
• Federal act that focuses on people with disabilities
• Section 508 (1986)
• Procurement law ONLY for the federal government
• Procured and created technology
• References WCAG 2.0 AA
• "Best meets"
• Section 504
• prohibits discrimination based on disability by federal agencies and recipients of federal assistance.
• States, education
• Focuses on physical accessibility (not technology)

Laws: State/local

• NITC 2-101: Accessibility Policy (2001)
• Statute 73-205
• Procurement law for the Nebraska State government (including educational entities)
• Based on an outdated version of the Section 508 technical standards
• (not WCAG 2.0AA)
• Could be city ordinances
• Could be company policy

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Who is covered by the letter of the law?

• It is clear that government entities MUST create and use accessible technology
• This includes
• Federal government entities (508)
• State/educational entities that receive federal funding (504)
• OCR/DOJ enforce and make this clear
• Everyone else (private sector): ADA
• "Place of public accommodation"?
• No technical regulations

Case law - The Private Sector

• ADA applies?
• Are websites considered a "place of public accommodation"?
• Judges and appellate courts are split
• Gil vs. Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. was the first to go to a full federal trial and not be settled out of court or dismissed
• No technical regulations
• Little to no case law
• Only settlements and resolution agreements

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Settlements and resolution agreements

• 2008: target (settled)
• 2008: CVS (settled)
• 2010: Jetblue (check-in kiosks, settled)
• 2011: Disney (theme park physical accessibility and websites, settled)
• 2012: Netflix (captions, settled)
• 2013: Bank of America (website, mobile iOS, settled)
• 2014: eBay (partnership, did not result in legal action?)
• 2015: Harvard, MIT (captions)
• 2016: Dicks Sporting Goods
• 2017: Gil v. Winn Dixie

Consistent outcomes (best practices)

• WCAG 2.0 AA
• Websites, mobile apps, kiosks, etc
• Might point to future laws and regulations

Arguments

Anti-Accessibility

• "There isn't a clear law that says I have to do it"
• "It costs extra money"

Pro-Accessibility

• There is a huge legal argument that accessibility is required.
• It might cost money at first, but only while you get used to it
• Many business benefits
• More customers
• Better SEO
• Distinguishes you from competitors
• More likely to be purchased by government entities
• Avoid threat of lawsuits

ADA rule making has been withdrawn

• Withdrawn by current administration (inactive)
• Was expected to be completed in 2018
• Would have clarified that the ADA covers websites as a 'place of public accommodation'
• Would have provided specific standards to what 'accessible' actually means
• Probably WCAG 2.0 AA
• Might become active under another administration?

The ADA Education and Reform Act (HR 620)

• Would limit the ability for consumers to file complaints under the ADA
• Meant to stop 'drive by' complaints
• Only affects complaints related to 'physical barriers'
• Might actually divert more complaints to the web
• Passed the house of representatives in February 2018
• Waiting in Congress

It took over 10 years to update Section 508

• 2001: Section 508 - Technical Standards
• 2008: WCAG 2.0
• ---
• 2017: Section 508 refresh (WCAG 2.0)
• Went into effect in 2018
• 2018: WCAG 2.1
• ---
• ????: Section 508 update (WCAG 2.1)

The future

WCAG 2.1

• W3C Recommendation 05 June 2018 (NEW!)
• Nothing removed from 2.0
• Focuses on
• Mobile devices
• Responsive design
• Touch interface
• Cognitive disabilities
• Input Modalities
• Voice input
• Touch input

Laws and Standards

• WCAG 2.1, 2.2, 3.0
• ADA Web specific rule-making - likely WCAG
• Nebraska NITC update

Automation and Artificial Intelligence

• Automatic alt text
• Facebook
• Automatic Alternative Text - wordpress plugin that uses Microsoft’s Cognitive Services Computer Vision API.
• Automatic captions (like YouTube)
• Getting better, but not 100% yet
• Fix accessibility problems on the fly at the AT layer?
• Kind of like 'quirks mode' in browsers
• Many screen readers already do this to some extent, but not very well
• Automatic Audio Descriptions and Transcripts of videos

Automation Warning

• Runs the risk of changing the meaning of the author's work
• Could be inaccurate
• Could focus on the wrong part of the image or video
• Could not be aware of the context

Medical and Assistive Technology Advances

• Could potentially cure blindness, hearing loss, cognitive disabilities, etc
• Possible barriers
• Cost
• Availability
• Expertise
• Religion and ethics

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Best Practices

Use these when starting a new project

• WCAG 2.1
• ARIA 1.1
• ATAG 2.0 (if an authoring tool)

Think about accessibility at all stages of the project

• Educate developers at the start
• Life cycle
• Planning
• Where is accessibility needed?
• Integrate accessibility into user stories and success criteria
• Development
• Test as you go
• Deliver
• One last test before you deliver
• Repeat (cycle)

Automated testing with axe-core

• https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core
• Checks the rendered result of a web page including all executed JS and CSS
• Browser extensions
• Robust API
• Integrate it into your workflow
• Continuous integration
• Automated crawling
• Won't catch everything (maybe 30% of possible problems if you are lucky)

Would you deploy an update without first testing it in at least one browser?

Test with a screen reader too!

Test with a screen reader

• Reasons why you should do this
• Much of accessibility is hidden visually and only surfaced by screen readers
• HTML semantics
• ARIA
• Will help expose you to a different way of understanding how your content can be used
• Will also test keyboard functionality at the same time
• Start with one and get familiar with it
• Suggested screen readers
• VoiceOver (mac, ios)
• NVDA (windows) - focus highlight plugin
• Talkback (android)
• JAWS
• Dragon Naturally Speaking (not a screen reader)

Thanks

• Michael Fairchild
• @mfairchild365
• mfairchild@unl.edu�

Please evaluate my session!

Examples of where Universal Design can be applied

• Searchable captions (TED)
• Make captions more relevant to everyone
• Lower reading level for your copy (AAA)
• Go beyond WCAG 2.0 Level AA
• Single page applications
• Announce page load (not explicitly covered by WCAG)

Persona: Nancy has a stutter

Barriers:

• Dependency on audio input

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Solutions and Assistive technology used

• Alternative means of input

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Nancy is a retired school teacher and a grandmother. She developed a stutter just a year ago after a major stroke.