Feedback on: Tips on Designing for Web Accessibility

Hi everyone,

I'm new here and spoke with Shawn last week. I'm an academic librarian from Canada. Shawn invited me to provide some comments on the following:
Tips on Designing for Web Accessibility: http://w3c.github.io/wai-quick-start/designing.html

Here are a few comments...

I liked that there were user stories, supportive tools, background information, and some "how to."  The reason I like this is because it provides a mix of human meaning (the story - but the links are broken) and  instrumental information, both of which are relevant.   Having tools listed (although the link is broken) is valuable because tools can make development easier.

I liked having examples of the techniques being described. What I noticed, however, is that the majority of examples seemed to have an Accessible Example but only the color contrast had an Inaccessible Example.  For consistency,  I think just having Accessible Examples would be enough.

A concern I have ... are there plans for it to scale?  I've gone through WCAG 2.0 and found it has hundreds of general/html/css/aria/etc.  techniques to integrate accessibility and meet the WCAG criteria.

I also found the page cluttered and so my attention was pulled in many directions while I was looking for its flow. I rendered the page to show just the Heading outline and the structure became much more clear.

Stepping back from this specific page,  one of the things I'm curious about is does the group have a staged-model of expertise development? That is, what are some of the development stages people often go through when becoming skilled in designing for web accessibility?  This does not necessarily have to be on the webpage, but what a developmental map can do is help understand the stages or thresholds of becoming skilled. I imagine having beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc. stages helps in educational planning and resource development.

For example, a developer at stage 1 might not be aware of any specialized tools or features of technologies to support accessible development.  A more advanced developer might have a range of tools and extensions installed to support their development work.  An more advanced user yet might have the most popular assistive technologies to test on. Likewise, a stage 1 developer might be guided by common but unhelpful assumptions that more advance developers have relinquished. A problem of being a novice is that it's hard to know what one doesn't know.  Developmental maps help chart a course.

Mark