Getting Started with Accessibility Governance
While not everyone will be remediating accessibility issues or creating accessible content, everyone will have a part to play in changing your organizational culture. Successfully incorporating accessibility into your operations will involve many people in all aspects of your organization’s administration and operations. This is where governance for accessibility comes into play.
The TAP team discusses how your organization can get started with accessibility governance.
How to Better Reach Your Audience with Accessible Copywriting
Accessible content will reach the broadest audience. It has two primary components: plain language and inclusive language. Plain language makes your content easy to understand because it reaches audiences with a variety of reading levels and cognitive abilities.
Inclusive language promotes more inclusion and equity for your audience. In Part One of this two-part series, we’ll discuss how to use inclusive language in your written communications.
Google Transcript and Otter.ai Meeting Transcription
Meeting transcripts can automatically capture the meeting discussion, which can help with making your digital content more accessible, make it easier to follow up with meeting participants afterward, and serve as a public record under CORA.
There are two options available to Colorado Executive Branch agencies supported by OIT: Google Transcripts and Otter.ai. The TAP Team has created a guide to help you differentiate between the two.
Colorado State Agency Spotlight
CDPHE Virtual Accessibility Checklist
By Joy Crouse (she/they) - CDPHE Learning Design, Development & Technology Specialist
Accessibility affects everyone, not just a select group of people. Being aware of resources to help our colleagues, staff, and stakeholders be able to show up fully to work is crucial for job satisfaction. At the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), we are invested in making sure all our employees and stakeholders have the tools they need to be successful in their jobs and in collaboration.
We developed a brief checklist below to help increase virtual accessibility for meetings, training, presentations, and digital content:
- All images, graphics, tables, etc. have alternative text (alt-text) for screen readers following WCAG 2.1 standards.
- All videos have accurate captions.
- All audio-only content has a full transcript.
- Tables are properly formatted so they are easily read by screen readers.
- Headings are used to organize content and make it easy to navigate.
- Contrasting colors and simple backgrounds are used in all materials.
- A color contrast checker and a colorblindness assessment have been used to check for visual accessibility
- Text and graphics are meaningful when viewed without color.
- Descriptive hyperlinks are used instead of the URL alone or a hyperlinked “click here.” Try using “Notes from Meeting” as your hyperlink phrase, something that describes the link in a few words.
- Links are provided to all applets, scripts, and plugins needed to launch various technologies.
- All documents and presentations have been reviewed with an accessibility checklist.
Additional accessibility resources can be found at OIT.Colorado.gov/Accessibility and in the Accessibility Training & Informational Resources by Topic document (Executive Branch Consolidated State Agencies: it is included in your Accessibility Implementation Methodology Toolkit).
Notable & Quotable
One argument for accessibility that doesn't get made often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people's lives. How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people's lives just by doing our job a little better?
- Steve Krug, UX Professional, and Author of Don't Make Me Think
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