Background
The need for creating this workshop arose from a grave understanding that web accessibility tends to still be a niche area only specialized professionals value in their everyday lives as designers, engineers and other stakeholders creating digital products.
Starting in a new company, one question tends to float into our consciousness - what is that special something I can bring to the table? In Penneo, it was obvious from the start it would be my previous knowledge of web accessibility that I had learned much about from my previous company. Even though I had hoped that in 2023 (when I started) the knowledge of the topic would have already become somewhat mainstream, it was an interesting challenge to bring web accessibility more into the focus of the whole product team.
This meant working closely with other designers and the engineering team to re-evaluate all our work, implement best practices, and as the first step, grow empathy and understanding of why this topic is important. Hence, an example of a workshop is down below: crude, very basic, but a great start for beginners.
Many thanks to Lucas Patrick Dechow for helping me to set this up.
Setup
The workshop was largely meant for three groups in Product: PMs, designers and engineers. The lesson tried to cover topics relevant for all, starting with more broad info regarding content and moving deeper into best practices in front-end development.
Introduction: The history of web accessibility and the importance of it.
Content: Everything related to content creation: how to write easy-to-read text, the importance of ALT texts and other little things that can make a difference.
Design: Introduction to visual impairments, color contrast, choice of fonts, etc.
Development: Undoubtedly the largest area of focus: keyboard navigation, screen readers, aria-labels and everything else that makes the code good.
It was important to start from the very beginning - why are we doing this?
The workshop participants were divided into teams to tackle the exercise given to them.
Creating empathy
While the lesson part was informative and took a deep dive into various practices a product team member could implement, it was important to give an understanding of what would be the actual impact of adopting a more accessibility-conscious mindset.
For that the participants were divided into groups, each given a case of a person with certain disability or unusual life situation. My colleagues were then to follow their case's "typical day" and deep-dive in the focus points given: how could a situation or the digital product be made more accessible?
The Exercise
The exercise was simple:
- The workshop participants were divided into four teams
- Each team received a persona, a worksheet displaying their person's average day, a "cheat sheet" and access to various (digital) products present in the day
- The team would follow the day from the morning to the evening and interact with the products, trying to pinpoint the accessibility problems and suggest improvements to them
- Present their findings to the others
An example of a worksheet - in this case the individual was an imaginary Helle with visual disability. The focus points with numbers were websites or mockups of websites that harbored multiple accessibility problems.
A "cheat sheet" of accessibility tools/practices for the persona Paul, who suffered from ADHD and Dyslexia and who had unfortunately broken his arm in a skiing accident.
Paul's persona card to give his character background.
The Results
Overall, I can say that the workshop was a great start to bring the discussion to the table. Combining a more traditional lesson with a presentation and examples with a hands-on exercise helped the participants understand the importance of those practices and the actual impact their choices make.
However, one lesson on web accessibility hardly makes anyone an expert, and it was obvious that in order to create this inclusive mindset, it was important to keep the conversation going. While this workshop covered just the basics, it did allow certain requirements to be put into place regarding current and future development. Some of the future decisions coming out of this initiative were:
- A web accessibility guide for engineers
- Requirements for keyboard-accessibility and aria-labels for new components and features
- Accessibility testing as part of QA
- Accessibility as part of Penneo Design System
- Accessibility audit for existing products
