Accessibility Workshop with Student Engagement Team
30th November 2022 by Tharindu Liyanagunawardena
Last Tuesday, I ran the first accessibility awareness workshop at the ÒÁÈËÖ±²¥app with the Student Support and Engagement team.
My colleague, Mira, was also there to help me facilitate the workshop. I planned the workshop to be delivered in person with a lot of activities for the participants to take part in. With twelve people in the room, it felt like the pre-COVID time when we used to have many in-person activities and meetings, though sanitising wipes and hand gel was there as a reminder of what we all have been through.
We first looked at the importance of accessibility. I like using the video created by WebAIM in my workshops. Though it was created a while ago, this short video provides a good insight into students’ lived experiences. The video shows students using various assistive technologies and as the first workshop activity, the participants were given the chance to use Windows Narrator, the built-in screen-reading app for Windows, to get exposure to assistive technologies.
Then we discussed the legal landscape, especially the difference between providing reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act and the more proactive nature of the . We also looked at web content accessibility guidelines and how detailed they are.
The next part of the workshop focused on what we can do to make content more accessible. We looked at the use of colour. Sufficient colour contrast between foreground and background is important to make text easily readable. can be used to check colour contrasts and it helps to interpret the colour contrast according to the current accessibility guidelines.