Today marks the seventh Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). GAAD aims to get people talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion. We are taking part in GAAD by thinking about how we can make our work more accessible to a wide spectrum of abilities.
We know we still have a lot to learn, so we put together a reading list of resources that have sparked ideas for us. We see accessibility as essential to good responsible data practice because it plays a key part in ensuring that a wider community can participate in and benefit from efforts to use data for social change.
This reading list is one step towards that, and we are open for your suggestions to add this growing list of resources. We have also created a Twitter list of people and organisations who spend time thinking about and working on accessibility awareness and disability rights.
Contact us at pverhaert[at]theengineroom.org, or on Twitter @engnroom, with any suggestions or thoughts. If you would like to participate in GAAD, the website lists a number of ways in which you, too, can participate in this day, alone or in a group.
Guides, guidelines and principles:
- A quick reference to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 requirements (success criteria) and techniques
- Center for Disability Rights’ ‘Disability Writing & Journalism Guidelines’
- Creative Bloq’s ‘Simple Introduction to Web Accessibility’
- BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines
- Web accessibility laws and policies
- Microsoft’s inclusive design principles
Case studies and lists:
- The UK Government shared their experience with user testing to improve accessibility
- Microsoft have written about the steps they are taking to make their products more accessible
- UX Collective’s ‘Stories for Access’
Podcasts:
- The Disability Visibility Podcast
- Meryl Alper talks about her book ‘Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality’ at Data & Society’s podcast
Essays & books:
- ‘Accessibility Handbook: Making 508 Compliant Websites,’ by Katie Cunningham
- ‘Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality,’ by Meryl Alper
- ‘Artificial Advancements,’ an essay by Taeyoon Choi
- ‘Designing Disability: Symbols, Space, and Society,’ by Elizabeth Guffey
- ‘Design Meets Disability,’ by Graham Pullin
Syllabuses:
- ‘Disability, Technology, and Media,’ by Professor Mara Mills
- ‘Disability, Technology, Communication,’ by Professor Jonathan Sterne
- ‘An introduction to disability studies for engineers,’ by Sara Hendren
