TechAccess, Oklahoma’s Premier Digital Accessibility Conference, will return for its annual edition on April 18 -20, 2023.

TechAccess Oklahoma is a free conference held by Oklahoma ABLE Tech to champion best practices in creating accessible digital content. If you create any form of digital content, from online courses to learning documents, best practices in accessibility equip you to serve the entire scope of your market.

Whether you work in video production, editorial or web development, join the free virtual event from April 18 – 20 to ensure everyone in your audience base can access your content.

Talks we’re excited about.

• Most Accessibility Learning is Broken: Let’s Fix It Together with Corbb O’Connor
• Small Shifts to Improve Digital Accessibility with Kate DeForest
• Getting Image Descriptions Right with Geoff Freed

View the full schedule

Win amazing prizes!

TechAccess Oklahoma is giving away a11y swag (books, t-shirts, and more) to select conference guests! Join the free conference and take the survey to qualify.

Register now

The post TechAccess Oklahoma 2023 – April 18-20 Event Invite appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Looking to explore accessibility best practices across team functions in your organizations? Find answers to all your questions about accessible digital products and more at Axe-con 2023.

Axe-con provides insights into the critical role key players across functions like legal, design, management, product, etc., play in building accessible digital experiences.

Talks at the conference will feature case studies from enterprise companies leading in large-scale accessibility efforts and best practices and updates from technology leaders worldwide.

Attendance at the conference is free, and you can use your attendance towards continuing education (CE) towards IAAP certification.

Talks we’re excited about

• Ageism in Interfaces with Alex Tait
• Redesigning for Cognitive Ease with Alyssa Panetta
• Accessibility Maturity Models with Jonathan Thurston and James Thurston

Full program schedule

Join the free virtual conference

Registration is free! Sign up to access the live sessions and on-demand recordings of 60 sessions.

Save your seat

Ready to make your digital products more accessible to your audience?

We provide inclusive website design solutions that welcome your audiences to engage with your content, products, and services. Bring the best of front-end development to your projects with our web standards-based, usable, accessible, and inclusive work.

Get in touch

The post Axe-con, March 15-16, 2023 event invite appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Are you looking to integrate inclusive design into your organization’s product design framework? Get the latest insights on product inclusion at Inclusive Design 24, a free, 24-hour, online event that will take place on September 22.

The event will feature talks on inclusive web design, building accessible user experiences, documenting accessibility requirements, and more.

Following the success of last year’s talk, “There is no average person”, Say Yeah CEO Lee Dale will be hosting the following conversations at this year’s conference:

• A Designer’s Guide to Documenting Accessibility with Stéphanie Walter at 20:00 UTC (4:00 pm EST)
• An Inclusive Design Workflow for Teams with Scott Vinkle at 21:00 UTC (5:00 pm EST)

Catch these other great talks

• Design on the Spectrum: Creating a More Inclusive Workplace with Lona Moore at 16:00 UTC (noon EST)
• Beyond the Water’s Edge with Malcom Glenn at 18:00 UTC (2:00 pm EST)
• Performative Equity & Inclusion with Zariah Cameron at 19:00 UTC (3:00 pm EST)
• Building UX research practices for inclusion with Josh Kim and Maureen Barrientos at 23:00 UTC (7:00 pm EST)

View the full schedule

Watch the conference

This event is free, with no registration required. Join the conversation live on the Inclusive 24 YouTube channel. 

Ready to adopt an inclusive design framework that helps grow product access and engagement? 

Learn about our approach to inclusive design and how we can help create delightful experiences for your audience.

Get in touch

The post Inclusive Design 24 Conference, September 22, 2022 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Attendees at the University of Guelph Accessibility Conference will get the opportunity to participate in workshops and informative sessions regarding themes such as IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility), education, UDL (Universal Design for Learning), and technology. Regardless if you are a novice or an expert on the topic of accessibility, everyone is welcome to attend!

Noteworthy sessions at the upcoming University of Guelph Accessibility Conference

• Mobile Accessibility: testing Mobile Sites and Native Apps for Accessibility, with Gian Wilde
• Creating Sustainable Accessible Interfaces, with Talyah Aviran
• Awareness of Assistive Technology in the Course Design Process Creates a More Egalitarian System, with Humberto Hernandez
• Accessibility is Everyone’s Responsibility: A Sustainable Team-Based Approach, with Mary Huang and Christine Hogenkamp

Check out the full lineup and conference schedule.

Register today!

Don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity to learn how you can leverage accessibility in your organization. Tickets start at $100. Sessions will be recorded and will be available for 30 days after the conference, along with transcripts.

Register here

Need help incorporating accessibility into your design process?

Learn about the differences between universal design, accessibility, and inclusive design in our blog post. Check out our approach to inclusive design and inclusive website design services.

Get in touch

The post The University of Guelph Accessibility Conference, May 24-26, 2022 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

This three-day accessibility conference will highlight best practices for building, testing, and maintaining accessible digital experiences.

Axe-con is a must-watch event for business owners, developers, designers, and accessibility professionals no matter the level of experience. Through these conversations, we can continue to take more assured steps forward towards more accessible websites and digital experiences.

There are a number of sessions set to take place over the three-day schedule to address technical topics like web forms, design principles for disability inclusion, and the future outlook for accessibility. An exciting line-up of experts in the web accessibility and inclusion space will be in attendance and on the speaker roster, providing their knowledge on these accessibility-focused topics.

Here are four sessions that caught our attention:

1. The Future of the Web and Accessibility with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Tuesday at 9 AM
2. Screen Readers and Beyond: A Guide to Assistive Technology for Digital Access with Crystal Preston-Watson, Tuesday at 3 PM
3. Designing for cognitive disabilities with Tolu Adegbite, Wednesday at 11 AM
4. Accessible Forms: It’s Not as Difficult as You Think with Maria Lamardo, Thursday at 12:30 PM

For more information and the full conference schedule check out the event website.

Full conference schedule

Register today or sign up to receive the recordings

Tune in live starting on March 15th, or watch the recordings anywhere, anytime. The conference is free for anyone across the world to join in on a great opportunity for building accessibility skills.

Register here

For further reading on web accessibility, check out these recent articles

1. Your website is probably broken: a look at the accessibility issues you forgot to test for
2. Why automated accessibility checkers can’t make your website accessible
3. What accessibility standards should you consider for your website?

More accessibility articles

Do you need support in making your website accessible? We can help.

Learn more about our inclusive website design services.

Get in touch

The post Axe-con: Building accessible experiences, March 15, 2022 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

#Id24 (Inclusive Design 24) is back with an all-new lineup of accessibility and inclusive design speakers. You won’t want to miss these packed 24 hours of inclusive design and accessibility talks, from expert speakers working globally to solve inclusive design and accessibility challenges.

Say Yeah CEO Lee Dale will be speaking at ID24 with his talk “There is no Average Person.”

Catch his talk at 3:00pm EST during the conference live stream.

Some additional talks we’re excited about:

• Inclusive Design is Fast by Default, with Simon Hearne
• Giving Voices Equity: Inclusive Teams Create Inclusive Products, with Paul Alexander
• Your Brain is Welcome Here: Digital Spaces Need a new Welcome Mat, with Glenda Sims and Jennie Delisi
• Auditorial: an innovative approach to inclusive storytelling, with Robin Spinks and Sonali Rai

Check out the full schedule

All live-streamed at no cost

This event is free, with no registration required. All conference talks will be streamed live on the Inclusive Design 24 YouTube channel.

Learn more

Are you looking to get started with inclusive design?

Look no further. We’re here to help. And it’s part of our DNA.

What is inclusive design?

Our approach to inclusive design.

Get in touch

The post Inclusive Design 24 (#Id24): September 23, 2021 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Although building a site with Webflow takes care of many content, design, and code accessibility considerations, making a more accessible Webflow website requires a few extra steps.

In our guide, we’ll walk you through the different areas you’ll need to consider when making your Webflow site to ensure accessibility for all. These factors include everything from form fields, to accessible navigation, to the structure of your site’s pages.

It’s important to consider accessibility when launching or updating your website. You could be inadvertently preventing members of your audience from using your site effectively.

And the best time to plan for accessibility in your work is right now, so let’s get started!

Explore the guide

Webflow accessibility can seem daunting, but our guide will help you with the processes and step-by-step requirements to deliver a more accessible site.

Whether you’re in the process of launching a new site or are looking to improve an existing one, the Webflow accessibility guide will help make your site, and your content, available to everyone.

Looking for additional support making your Webflow site more accessible?

We’ve done the hard work of understanding these requirements, how to execute, and bring these practices to your team for ongoing improvements and future projects. Whether you’re launching something new or looking to improve an existing site, we can help.

Get in touch

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It’s key to make sure these accessibility details are taken care of when you’re working on a new site or with your next site update since, without them, you could be preventing some of your audience from using your site effectively (or using your site at all).

An accessible website opens up new market opportunities by ensuring all the information on your website is available to disabled users or people with other accommodation needs.

Accessible websites also help improve access for all by ensuring your content is as understandable and available as possible across all devices and potential use cases.

Let’s walk through the areas you’ll need to consider and implement for an accessible Webflow site.

Landmarks and page structure

Webflow makes structuring your pages for screen readers and keyboards fairly straight-forward with changes to a few different settings on your page elements.

A survey from WebAim found that almost 60% of screen reader users used landmarks at least occasionally when browsing websites.

One of the most important things you’ll want to implement is landmarks. The best way to do this is by looking at your page’s major elements (navigation, footer, the main body of your page) and making sure the appropriate landmark is set.

Webflow steps for setting landmarks

Click on any element. In the right sidebar, click on the element Settings to set its Tag (Webflow’s setting for landmarks). Your navigation landmark will typically already be taken care of by Webflow if you’re using a navbar component, but you’ll need to set the main container for your content as “Main” and your footer as “Footer” in these settings.

Adding a skip navigation link

Another crucial part of making a website accessible is ensuring that screen reader users or keyboard-only users can skip having to go through your navigation links every time they reach a new page of your site. Webflow doesn’t have a built-in way to do this yet, so a skip navigation will need to be built into your site using custom code.

Webflow steps for adding a skip navigation link

This tutorial will help you implement the functional part of the skip navigation (which you’ll need to add to each of your pages and templates) and this guide will provide the necessary code to hide the skip navigation until it is revealed by tabbing to it.

By combining these two tutorials, you’ll be able to add skip navigation to your site, making it more usable for keyboard-only and screen reader users.

Make sure to create a site map page

One accessibility standard that’s often overlooked is support for multiple ways to navigate through a site easily. Your menu and link structure will typically take care of one way of doing this, but adding a site map is key to making the rest of your site’s pages discoverable.

Something that often gets confused in this process is the difference between a sitemap for search engine indexing (e.g. an XML/auto-generated site map) and a site map page that is available to your site’s users. Webflow will auto-generate an SEO sitemap for you if the setting is enabled, but a site map for your users will need to be created by you using a standard Webflow page.

Webflow steps for creating a site map page

To make a site map page:

1. structure a page with an overall heading of “Site Map”;
2. add headers for each of the main categories of pages on your site;
3. include links to every page of your site on this page under the appropriate categories.

This page on our volunteer org site for Together is an example of a simple site map for accessibility purposes created with Webflow.

Bonus: site map pages are also a benefit for SEO (search engine optimization) as they highlight and link to all the most important pages of your site.

Adding this page to your website and linking it in the footer will ensure that anyone looking for a specific page can find it more easily, especially if your site does not have search functionality, and it will also provide an extra boost to your SEO.

Making your site’s menu accessible

Another part of making a Webflow site accessible is making sure your menu works and is usable for all of your users.

This can involve many considerations depending on dropdowns, hover states, and more, but at its most basic, you should ensure that you add a state change (e.g. an underline on hover and selection) rather than just a colour change, and make sure that all menu items have a focus state when a keyboard user tabs to them.

Webflow steps for more accessible menus

Typically, all Webflow stock navigation will have focus states, but you will need to add underlines yourself so that changes on hover are also more accessible.

Ensure your Webflow forms are accessible

Forms can often present a complex accessibility challenge, but Webflow settings are available to make accessible forms without any custom code.

Some tips to boost your form’s accessibility

Ensure error states have a symbol and text associated with them, along with any colour change you might use to indicate errors.

The Webflow default is just an error message with a colour change, but colour changes aren’t necessarily visible to everyone, which is why an error symbol is a great addition. As an example, we like to use a rounded triangle with an exclamation mark inside of it.

Make sure your form labels are properly associated with the fields (this will also ensure your form responses make sense!)

To do this, in the settings for each text field, ensure the name is the same as the field label above. This ensures no confusion about which field belongs to which label.

One additional step to ensure your form fields are fully ARIA compliant (necessary for accessibility in many cases) is to change the name of your field to be a custom HTML field, to create a “for” label. This change ensures that screen readers can better understand the fields used.

This tutorial from Jeff S can help you implement these changes for your form fields

Ensure your focus states for your form fields have enough contrast and are present for all fields.

The focus states on your form field are a way for users to tell which field they are currently filling out when using a keyboard to navigate. It’s best to use a combination of a thicker box around the field, a contrast change in the colour, and/or a shadow around the field to ensure the focus states are as clear as possible.

A form field without focus, before it is clicked or navigated to.

The form field with the focus state when navigated to or clicked on. This is an example of a focus state that uses a darker colour, and a thicker border to ensure the change in state is more perceivable.

Webflow accessibility tools and resources

As you’re putting your site together, be sure to take advantage of Webflow’s built-in accessibility capabilities and learning resources.

Baked into Webflow is the ability to add alternative text descriptions to each of your images. You can also make your site more accessible by making sure you use correct headings, e.g. an H2 should come before an H3.

Webflow has recently released an accessibility tool right in the designer that will catch a lot of these smaller issues for you automatically.

You can also learn more about accessibility basics from Webflow university.

Webflow is a great accessibility platform for your site

Webflow accessibility can seem daunting, but it’s totally doable by following our Webflow accessibility guide along with general content, design, and code accessibility best practices. In fact, Webflow is one of the top website platforms we’ve reviewed for accessibility. It’s up to you to take advantage of this great opportunity to make your site more accessible to your audience!

And, by doing this work as you’re putting your site together, you’ll make sure you don’t have to reconstruct your template later in order to make your site, and your content, more accessible to everyone.

Looking for additional support on making a more usable, accessible, and inclusive website?

Get started with our Inclusive Website Audit to uncover issues with your current website or get in touch to learn more about our accessible website design services.

Get in touch

The post How to make Webflow sites accessible—a step-by-step guide appeared first on Say Yeah!.