Please note: due to issues with the poor sound quality of the video no captions will be provided, please reference the slides for information on the A11yFirst plugins: https://aitg.disability.illinois.edu/presentations/2019-04-webmasters/ or contact Jon Gunderson (jongund@illinois.edu).

The A11yFirst project is designed to help people using content management systems like Drupal create more accessible content. Most people creating and editing web content have little knowledge of accessibility or even the university’s commit to provide accessible content to students, faculty, staff and the general public. The features of the A11yFirst plugins are designed to help raise awareness and guide authors in creating structured documents using headings (H1-H6), getting immediate feedback on common accessibility issues with link text and alternative text for images, identifying images with additional descriptions within the document and accessibility help to provide a reference for authors to easily learn more about accessibility. A11yFirst is based on CKEditor and the project has created CKEditor plugins to add the additional accessibility functions. A A11yFirst Editor Enhancements Module has been created for Drupal 8 to add the options to the Drupal editor configuration toolbar. This session will demonstrate the A11yFirst features and demonstrate how to install and configure the A11yFirst module for Drupal 8. The session will also be an opportunity to get feedback from the web master community on the current features and learn priorities for future development.

Presenter(s)

Dr. Gunderson is the Coordinator of Accessible IT Group in the Division of Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES) . He is responsible for helping the campus understand the accessibility issues of its online administrative and instructional resources and works with campus IT professionals and instructors to improve accessibility. He leads the development group working on open source web accessibility evaluation tools including AInspector WCAG add-on for Firefox browser, Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) 2.0, Accessibility Bookmarklets and A11yFirst enhancements to CKEditor. He has taught numerous online courses and workshops on accessible web design including courses on using the new W3C Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) specifications to create accessible web applications. He is a member of the W3C WAI ARIA working group. He participates and leads both regional and national consortiums of higher educational institutions to promote and work together on improving information technology access in higher education. He is a Certified Web Accessibility Professional (CWAP) from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP).

JaEun (Jemma) Ku’s professional career spans more than two decades in Information and Communication Technology(ICT) research and Web development. In particular, she is a passionate advocate for designs that deliver accessible user experience with ICT. She holds a Ph,D. in public administration, an M.S. in public policy, and a second M.S. in information science. She is also a certified Project Management Professional and Trusted Tester by the Dept. of Homeland Security Office of Accessible Systems and Technology. She is an editor of the W3C Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) Authoring Practices and W3C WCAG Silver Taskforce, she contributes to improve web accessibility and usability. She is leads web development for ACES extension services.

Nicholas Hoyt is a software developer and interaction designer with Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES) at the University of Illinois and has served in this capacity for more than 12 years. He led the software development and interaction design of the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE), AInspector WCAG and the Accessibility Bookmarklets. He is currently responsible for the software development and interaction design of the A11yFirst enhancements to CKEditor. In addition to these responsibilities, he led the development of a conceptual model for web accessibility evaluation used as the basis for the designs of FAE and the AInspector add-on for Firefox. He has made significant contributions to the APIs of the OpenAjax Evaluation Library and other software tools developed by the DRES IT Accessibility group and has contributed JavaScript examples to the ARIA Authoring Practices working group.