Evaluation

A student group named incluSITE is working on a project to increase web accessibility for users with visual impairments. At the CodeAda hackathon hosted by Women in Computer Science (WCS) last October, they leveraged the WAVE API to identify web accessibility issues in high-traffic federal websites; in their research, they found 965 individual web accessibility issues over 224 federal websites. As they continue this project in the DevAda program, they are interested in learning more about web accessibility.

Amy Young brought us an interesting topic this month: join us for a discussion of Checkvist, a keyboard-driven task/list manager. The developers of this tool designed it for developers and anyone else who wants to avoid using the mouse for improved concentration, comfort, and productivity. They created Checkvist ~12 years ago as an experiment, inspired by aspects of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like VSCode and IntelliJ IDEA: for example, no reliance on the mouse, minimal UI, and immersive work.

Experience Champaign-Urbana, in collaboration with Community Choices and the College of Education @ Illinois, has launched Accessible CU, a directory assessing the accessibility of hotels, shops, restaurants, and attractions in Champaign-Urbana and the surrounding area, outlining the physical, sensory, cognitive, and accommodation-ready characteristics of local businesses. Learn more about the process behind building this directory by visiting the Accessible CU webpage and

Technology Services is working on updating the Campus Mailing List Service to Sympa v6.2.64. There are many UI changes in the 6.2.x version and they are interested in getting feedback on the accessibility of the system.
Two important assets in web accessibility are tools that aid in preventing mistakes that lead to inaccessible content and tools that aid in finding accessibility flaws. The DRES Accessible IT Group page list many tools that will be helpful in creating accessible content and remediating accessibility issues.