“The one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly 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, User Experience Expert and Author
Impact
Accessible front-end development ensures people with different abilities can access, understand, and navigate web content, regardless of how they’re accessing it.
Developing accessible digital products requires a commitment to learning and implementing accessibility skills and best practices.
As a developer, you are critical to making state websites and applications accessible and you should be including accessibility as soon as you begin writing code.
Assessing and testing websites and apps for accessibility as you build them will ensure they function and display correctly for people with disabilities.
Your Responsibilities
- Understand the State Accessibility Technical Standard, front-end accessibility development best practices, and testing processes.
- Build and test websites and applications that work for all users, including those with disabilities.
- Coding to standards is critical because it supports flexibility. For example, allowing users to set the width of the window so they can adjust the line length, or change the colors on the screen.
- Integrate accessibility acceptance criteria into user stories.
- Include compliance with state accessibility standards in the “definition of done” for all product increments.
- Include both automated and manual testing accessibility testing into development sprints.
- Understand the value of the Siteimprove tool and be able to use it when possible to assess and improve website accessibility.
What You Can Do
Learn about developing for accessibility
Evaluate a website or application for accessibility
We cannot check all accessibility using a tool alone. Human judgment is required because automated tools may give inaccurate results.
Evaluate accessibility early and throughout the process to find and fix problems early. This will save you time and money in the long run.
Testing Resources
- ICT Testing Baseline for Web Accessibility, US Access Board
- WCAG Compliance Checklist, A11yproject
- Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility, W3C
- How to Meet WCAG (Quick Reference), W3C
Evaluation Tools
State Agency Planning Resources
IT Accessibility Planning Guide
The IT Accessibility Planning Guide website is made available only to state agencies for the purpose of providing guidance, tools and updates that are relevant only to state agencies and their unique statutory requirements. The Technology Accessibility Program team (TAP) has made every effort to provide similar, relevant resources available to local government entities (see Local Government Resources).
Contact: oit_accessibility@state.co.us
Local Government Planning Resources
Accessibility Planning for Local Government, 2023 (Google Slides)
This presentation is designed to help local government teams understand their responsibilities and provide basic guidance for planning and operationalizing accessibility. Similar guidance can be found on the Accessibility Planning Core Criteria webpage.
- Colorado Laws for Persons with Disabilities
- Planning tools and guidance
- Links to more information and resources
Contact: oit_accessibility@state.co.us