Accessibility

Warning

🚧 This section is still in active development and is subject to changes 🚧

Introduction

It is important to us that the outputs of the Seedcase Project (including the websites, the software products, and the teaching material) are as accessible as possible. This includes people with disabilities, people who are older, people who are not native English speakers, and people who are not familiar with technology.

We want to ensure that a multitude of users will be able to work with our software and interact with our documentation. At first this was a question of ensuring that our colour scheme was accessible to people with colour blindness, which in turn lead us to consider other accessibility issues. We want to ensure that the Seedcase Project is as inclusive as possible, so it’s accessible to as many users as possible. This is also a requirement for the Seedcase Project to be successful in the long term.

There are a number of ways of looking at accessibility, the most common are accessible content and visual accessibility. We will work with both.

Accessible content

Accessible content is content that is easy to understand and use for everyone. This includes things like accessible naming and using a polite setting for hidden text. Ensuring that the language isn’t too technical or complex, and that pictures and potential audio/visual content are described in a way that is compatible with screen readers.

Things to check for during development:

  • is the text too complex?
  • is the language too technical?
  • are the images described in a way that is compatible with screen readers (i.e., do we include alt texts)?
  • are the buttons and links named in a way that is easy to understand?
  • are the interactive elements easy to navigate with a keyboard?
  • are any landmarks/headings coded in a way that makes guides a screen reader in a logical way? (i.e., do we avoid skipping header levels?)
  • if we end up making videos or audio content, is there a transcript available?

Visual accessibility

Visual accessibility is about making sure that websites and apps are easy to use for people with visual impairments. This includes things like ensuring that the colour scheme is accessible to people with colour blindness and that the text is easy to see. It also includes things like ensuring that our websites and apps are easy to navigate, and that the buttons are easy to click on.

Things to check for during development:

  • is the colour scheme accessible to people with colour blindness?
  • is the colour ratio between text and background high enough (minimum 4.5:1)?
  • is the text easy to read (large enough font)?
  • is the line length suitable (between 45 and 75 char)?
  • are the meaning the icons convey established (like a pencil for edit, or a square for stop)?
  • are the buttons easy to click, with a tap-target a minimum of 44x44 px and not too closely spaced?
  • are the interactive states of buttons easy to see (default, focus/hover, active/pressed, deactivated)?

Conclusion

We decided to work on both accessible content and visual accessibility even though this will take more time to implement and that this doesn’t cover all accessibility issues. However, we believe that making our websites, software products, and teaching materials as accessible as possible is crucial. This commitment aligns with our values. The focus on accessible content and visual accessibility is a great first step to make the Seedcase Project more accessible. Some of the points highlighted above are things we will need to pay attention to (like text complexity), others are some that we will be able to incorporate into our development process (like ensuring that the colour scheme is accessible to people with colour blindness, and that buttons have an accessible contrast ratio).

There are numerous ways to test for accessibility, and we will need to ensure that we have a good testing plan in place. This will at present be a semi-manual process, the details of which are described in the Accessibility testing plan.

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