Web Accessibility

[afiumano]

We have had several of our clients come to us wanting an ADA compliant website. So we have been working on making our websites more accessible. We are just starting to redesign a Miva store and I would love to try this new theme. In trying to navigate a product page with a keyboard (https://colossus.mivareadythemes.com/coffee-09.html), I am unable to select the product attributes - when tabbing for some reason it was skipping over the sizes and the arrow keys won't toggle the dropdown menu for the "select a grind". And 'focus' keeps getting lost as I tab through the page.
It would be great if some more of the accessibility issues could be addressed.

[Matt Zimmermann]

That level of accessibility will be added in the coming months.

[GDesigns]

To chime in here – can you post some accessibility guidelines/tools/code changes and examples, preferably for Shadows/Colossus here so we have a starting point besides Googles, please?
Besides tabbing and running a tool like https://accessibilityinsights.io/ - how do you check if it actually works?
I don't know how to use a screen reader :)

[lesliekirk]

I don't know how to use a screen reader :)

This is where we need Pamela - she could help us with this.

[Matt Zimmermann]

I utilized the Axe Developer Tools by Deque Labs [ https://www.deque.com/ ] and WAVE Accessibility Extension by WebAIM [ https://webaim.org/ ] [ http://wave.webaim.org/ ]. Both are available as services and as browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome. In addition, I use the built-in accessibility testing in Firefox and Chrome developer tools.

As for the guidelines, the initial goal with Colossus was to make it so it should pass all WCAG-A, WCAG-AA, and Section 508 tests without errors or violations. There is still some warnings that I will need to take care of, but those are the standards I am after at the moment. Following that, I will be looking into further ADA compliance.

[GDesigns]

Matt Zimmermann so Colossus passes up to level AAA (which is sort of impossible)?

[Matt Zimmermann]

Hi Sabine,

Yes, for now. After I refit Shadows for accessibility, I will know how far it will go. Who knows, maybe I can get it into AAA a bit ¯\_('')_/¯

[afiumano]

We are also using the WAVE tool and Axe chrome browser extensions, as well as the built-in accessibility tools in Chrome for testing. I was testing out the keyboard accessibility by using the Chromevox extension in Chrome. Google has a free accessibility course that we have been trying to learn from as well: https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891.

[Matt Zimmermann]

Thank you afiumano for the course link and extension pointer.