Mission Statement
Proposed Revisal:
Our objective is to create a web-based accessibility resource designed for undergraduate and graduate students who are seeking to create their own digital web-based projects in order to promote accessible digital practices. Our goal is not to be a completely comprehensive resource, but rather an easy-to-use reference guide for students who may not be familiar with accessibility practices and may not be the most technologically-oriented. We also intend to provide information on some commonly-used tools as they relate to accessibility so that students can make informed decisions based on the content of their project. Our site will serve as an aggregate for other, more comprehensive or tailored accessibility resources students may use on their projects.
Our site will consist of numerous pages with examples of proper website accessibility. Each page will be tagged so as to be findable in the search bar.
We plan to use the University of Mary Washington Digital Knowledge Center (DKC) to spread the site to students via the DKC website and physical posters posted in the DKC. Our target audience are undergraduate and graduate students, primarily in the United States of America, who are interested in creating their own digital web-based project either for classwork, professional development, or personal interest. Our planned audience are not experts on web accessibility nor intricacies of web development, therefore our project will be catered to users who are unfamiliar or only passingly familiar with web accessibility and web development.
Tools
- WordPress
- Hosting platform for our website as well as being used for demonstrative purposes.
- We plan to include a robust search system utilizing WordPress’ built-in tags and categories features.
- Microsoft Teams and Discord
- Group communication.
- TimelineJS & StorymapJS
- Demonstrative purposes to provide examples of best practices and accessibility considerations for these commonly-used tools.
- Will be used for the creation of example timelines and storymaps to point out potential accessibility challenges such as bad font, confusing layout, etc. as well as inherent difficulties with regards to accessibility, such as potentially lacking support for screen readers.
- Information about the tools will be provided so users can take into consideration whether the accessibility difficulties they may encounter are worth the usage of the tool based on the content and needs of their project.
- WAVE Accessibility Checker & WebAIM Contrast Checker
- Provided as a resource for users and to help us verify accessibility of our own site.
- UMW History website
- Final host for our project.
- Proposed URL: accessibility.umwhistory.org
- Title II/Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) & WCAG2 guidelines
- Accessibility guidelines and rules to ensure our website is both accessible and provides accurate information.
- University of Mary Washington’s Digital Knowledge Center (DKC)
- Promotion of our project via DKC website and physical space, tools and equipment as needed (i.e. quality microphones for video or audio creation, Adobe suite for poster creation), guidance as needed, potential archival.
- Help narrowing down which aspects of Title II to focus on for a student audience
- Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides
- For collaborative group work and tracking group work.
- Used in the creation of TimelineJS
Schedule
- Feb 17: Finalized contract
- Feb 24: Revised Contracts due
- Feb 26: 3-minute presentation
- March 3: Create domain and initial research
- March 10: First pass writing
- March 12: 8-minute presentation
- March 23: Second draft, Timeline, and Storymap
- Match 24: 3-minute presentation
- March 27: Proofreading
- April 1: User testing of website
- April 2: 10-minute progress report presentation
- April 6: Final review
- April 9: Project due
- April 16: Legacy summary
- April 23: Reflection paper/blog post
- April 24: Public presentation of project
Division of Labor & Project Roles
- Blue
- Initial research
- Website building
- Overall design and navigation
- Technical
- Proofreading & editing
- Directing user testing
- Guy
- Initial research
- Writing accessibility guides
- Creation of example timeline
- Proofreading
- User testing
- Summary/legacy page
- Vumiliya:
- Initial research
- Writing accessibility guides
- Creation of example storymap
- Proofreading
- User testing
- Creation of posters for advertising
Miscellaneous Considerations
- Title II (Revised Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA))
- We will be utilizing an ‘accessibility-ready’ WordPress theme as well as an accessibility-focused plug-in and custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as necessary.
- Most of our content will be text-based and we will follow accessibility best practices regarding such content. All images will either have alt text and/or a caption, if necessary. All of our own video content–if we have such–will have closed captioning, a complete transcript, and an alternate audio description version of the video available. All other content will be made as accessible as possible within the limitations of the respective tool.
- As of the current moment, we are not certain if we will be creating video content as part of this project.
- Our website will be fully keyboard-navigable, within the limitations of WordPress.
- All hyperlinks will be descriptive (i.e. not ‘bare links’) and will be longer than one character in length to ensure accessibility for users with motor control limitations.
- All animations will be able to be toggled off with a reduced motion setting, within the limitations of WordPress.
- All content, with the exception of content explicitly for demonstration of certain accessibility concepts, will maintain a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1, in congruence with WCAG2 SC1.4.3.
- All user inputs will have a specified purpose and give details about what content may be input, where applicable.
- All content which is purposefully made inaccessible for demonstration purposes will be explicitly marked as such to prevent confusion and as much additional information as possible will be provided so that users with accessibility challenges will not be left out.
- There will be no use of Generative AI for this project.
Digital Signatures
Blue Shojinaga
Vumiliya Veriak
Gabrielle Guy