Reviewing Website for AODA Compliance

Curriculum Integration Statement / Values Statement

The integration of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) into curriculum is fundamentally relational and is strengthened through mentorship, collaboration, attentive listening, and reflective practice. Meaningful engagement in learning by students, and society more broadly, depends on access to inclusive and accessible materials, resources, and workspaces; therefore, the ability to design and deliver accessible content is essential.

Setting the Context / Curriculum Integration Goals

This activity will help with the integration of EDI into the curriculum, through a lens of critical thinking. Students will use real-world examples of inaccessible website that they find to discuss accessibility requirements. They will then share those examples with their classmates through a discussion post.

The goals for this activity include the following:

• To integrate EDI into the curriculum in an authentic and thoughtful manner.
• To create accessible digital content and websites that are AODA compliant.

Activity Description

Students are asked to find an inaccessible website, apply what was already learned about AODA and WCAG principle for accessible design and content, and write a discussion post with their findings. Then, they review their classmates’ posts and comment.

Instructor Notes

This activity would occur after some form of direct instruction in creating accessible digital content. At a minimum, the following topics need to be covered:

• Font selection
• Emphasis of text (e.g., bold, underline, italics, all caps)
• Colour used as emphasis for text
• Colour contrast requirements
• Images and ALT text (finding the ALT text on a website would be “more advanced”)
• Complex images
• Hyperlinks
• Video captioning (optional – not all websites have video)

More advanced topics that can be covered (depending on the specific course requirements):

• Heading structure
• Accessible navigation
• Buttons
• Forms

Examples of Inaccessible Websites

Knitting Help (knittinghelp.com)

1. This website has some colour contrast issues. For example, the buttons under the section “There’s a lot more to KnittingHelp.com” do not meet AODA requirements as well as the “Home” tab in the selected state.
2. Ideally, we want to use sans serif fonts; currently there are parts of the website that use serif fonts.
3. The video is not captioned properly.

GoOrigami – Origami Butterfly (https://goorigami.com/single-sheet-origami/origami-butterfly/3006)

1. The hyperlinks use colour as the only way of identifying themselves. The hyperlinks need to either be underlined or have a symbol in addition to the colour.
2. The hyperlinks do not meet AODA requirements for colour contrast.
3. The infographic showing the instructions of how to make an origami butterfly does not have text alternative (in this case we need a long description with all the steps).

Instructions for Students for the Discussion Board

For this week’s discussion, I would like you to do the following:

1. Considering everything we learned in this course, search the internet for an example of an inaccessible website. There is a lot out there! Provide a screenshot and link to the website.
2. Write a post about what you found. How many accessibility issues did you find? What is not accessible about it? Who does it impact? What needs to be changed?
3. Then, review the sources provided from your classmates and comment. Are you able to identify any additional issues? If not, what do you feel the website did well?

Summary

This kernel provided an activity idea for the Illustration program on identifying inaccessible website content and applying knowledge learned about AODA and WCAG to remediate the issues.