Follow up to the last Advancing Accessibility Resources CG meeting

Hi all,

I wanted to follow up on last night's AAR meeting for those that could not attend, as we have some activities that we would like everyone to participate in, if possible.

First, please check out the minutes from the meeting<https://github.com/w3c-cg/aar/wiki/Meetings#meeting-notes> to get an idea of what was discussed.

Navigating the WAI website

We would like everyone to informally poll your colleagues/a11y friends/conference attendees (CSUN, AccessU) about what they think about the WAI website.
The goal of this is to gather anecdotal evidence to help support the notion that we need to do a deep dive into where there may be issues finding content and navigating within WAI and build a more formal survey for broad distribution (or perhaps we'll find that we don't need to dive any deeper and the resource isn't needed).

We would like the questions to be casual and non-leading so that we can get a true sense of what people's feelings are with WAI. (We don't want to start off by asking "What do you think is wrong with WAI", but rather "where do you tend to go for a11y resources?", "Do you use WAI?", "What is that experience like?", etc.)

Kris Anne has a Google doc<https://docs.google.com/document/d/17gFVQs_U_7A8Hf6fKS0c75dVo2gr6_JWfUNs9SsQXB0/edit?tab=t.0> where we are gathering ideas for the kinds of non-leading questions we can ask, so please visit that for ideas and contribute your own.

We don't have a strict timeline on this but would like the informal conversations to start happening ASAP (if anyone is going to CSUN, that could be a great opportunity). We will look into building the more formal survey when we feel like we have enough anecdotal information, hopefully within a couple of months.

Teaching Accessibility to Young Coders

I have been working on two things for the last little while and would love some input and help in fleshing out ideas.

The first is the notion of Accessibility Literacy for young coders. I have notes about this in the Concepts - Accessibility Literacy tab<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aFU-RyLrIdGZGuZbDWn_IoT5Cal8RBQhF9uyJezS2Cc/edit?tab=t.iyp0xmja794i> of the TAtYC workspace doc<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aFU-RyLrIdGZGuZbDWn_IoT5Cal8RBQhF9uyJezS2Cc/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.be5tmv3c58ef> and would love feedback or ideas on how to adapt the concept from adults to kids.

The second is looking at common learning platforms that are used to teach young students about coding. The notes for this are in the Common learning platforms used in CS classes<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aFU-RyLrIdGZGuZbDWn_IoT5Cal8RBQhF9uyJezS2Cc/edit?tab=t.u0jrg87l7ngo> of the TAtYC workspace doc.

There are a couple of things that I would like from this group regarding the platforms:

  1.  Do you know of any learning platforms that younger students use to learn coding that are not listed here? Perhaps you have kids taking computer science (or related) classes, or know a teacher that may have insight? Or do you have friends or colleagues with younger children taking these kinds of classes?
  2.  With each platform I want to examine ways that we could incorporate accessibility concepts into the types of exercises that are provided and could use help in this. This may just be walking through some of the activities to see where there might opportunities for learning a11y and jotting them down. It could be creating entirely new projects in the platform to demonstrate ways to incorporate a11y. It depends on your knowledge and comfort with building projects.
     *   I have already started with Scratch, which is a very popular platform, where I have created projects that incrementally add or incorporate accessibility principles to a simple base project (if you are curious, I'd be happy to walk anyone through it - there are links to the projects in the doc, but the projects are not public yet, so I don't think you would be able to see them).

Please let me or Kris Anne know if you have any questions or want to get more involved in ether project. And don't forget that we have a Procurement project that is just starting to get its legs, so reach out if you want to have more involvement there too.

Lastly, if you are attending CSUN in a couple of weeks, please let me know and we can try to arrange to meet up! I will be giving a presentation on Teaching Accessibility to Young Coders on the Friday morning at 10:20, so drop in if you are able.

Thanks!

Brian


Brian Elton
Practice Manager, Training
W3C Advisory Committee Representative
W3C Advancing Accessibility Resources Community Group Co-chair

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