Work through 'Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility'

[amyheather]

https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/easy-checks/

Common checks

• Image Alternative Text
  Image alternative text (“alt text”) is a short description that conveys the purpose of an image. Alternative text is used by people who do not see the image. --> Enforced via GitHub action lint_alt_text.yml

• Page Title
  Page titles are shown in the window title bar or tab in browsers. They are the first thing read by screen readers and help people know where they are. --> Each page has unique title

• Headings
  Headings communicate the organization of the content on the page, like a table of contents. Screen reader users often use page headings as a way to navigate a web page. --> Pages have headings, start with H1, don't skip levels (Quarto does warning when render if do), text is all clearly rendered as heading, they reflect the content that follow

• Color Contrast
  Color contrast refers to the difference between adjacent colors. Typically this is the text and background color. It also includes interactive elements and their background, and parts of graphs or charts. Some people cannot read text or find elements if there is insufficient contrast between colors.

• Skip Link
  A skip link is the first interactive element on a page. People using keyboards, screen readers and other assistive technologies can use skip links to quickly and easily reach the main page content. --> Not currently supported in Quarto, and couldn't find a way to implement. Following: https://github.com/orgs/quarto-dev/discussions/10096

• Visible Keyboard Focus
  Keyboard focus is a visible indicator that identifies the element with focus and moves as your tab through a page. For people who rely on a keyboard to navigate it is important that they know which link or form control has focus. --> Tested by pressing Tab repeatedly - it moves through nav, sidebar, TOC and main links in a logical order - and there is a visible outline on each focused link/button

• Language of Page
  Web pages should identify the primary language of the page. Specifying the language of the page means that assistive technology that speaks content can correctly pronounce words. --> Used W3C tool to confirm that page language is identified as english.

• Zoom
  Zoom is used to enlarge the text and images on web pages to make them more readable. Some people need to enlarge content in order to read it. When content is zoomed it still needs to legible and usable. --> Confirmed that zoomed and narrow browsers are still legible, text wraps.

Audio/Visual Checks

• Captions
  Captions are a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information needed to understand the video and displayed with the video. The audio in video content needs to be available to people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.

• Transcripts
  Transcripts are a text version of the speech and non-speech information in audio content and available separately from the video. They are used by people who are Deaf, hard of hearing or who have difficulty processing audio information.

• Audio Description
  Audio description describes visual information needed to understand the content, including text displayed in the video, as part of the video. It provides content to people who are blind and others who cannot see the video adequately.

Form Checks

N/A - no forms.

• Labels
  Form field labels are the text beside form fields. They should tell us what information to enter or what checkbox to select. Everyone needs labels to understand how to interact with a form.

• Required Fields
  A required form field must be completed before you submit a form. Marking which fields are required in a form makes it easier for everyone to complete forms.