ARIA training resources

Before we dive into this month’s training resources, it’s helpful to know most people just need to know what ARIA is – not how it works. We do suggest developers and people who edit HTML get more familiar with ARIA by going through our resources.

Below, you’ll find resources to share and an activity.

We suggest starting by sharing our ARIA article – even 5 minutes is enough to learn more.

You could then use the resources and activity for a live or pre-recorded training or discussion.

To see all our topics, check out Pope Tech’s Monthly Accessibility Focus topics.

Share questions, feedback, and experiences on Twitter
using #AccessibilityFocus.

Resources to share

• Pope Tech’s What you need to know about ARIA and how to fix common mistakes. This article is great to share with people who don’t work in HTML and people who do. We quickly cover what everyone should know and then have an introduction to ARIA for people working in the HTML. We end with real-world examples of common ARIA mistakes and how to fix them.
• Pope Tech’s impact of using ARIA incorrectly video. This video is another great resource to share with anyone. We explain what ARIA is, the impact of using it incorrectly, and then show examples of how using it incorrectly affects assistive technology users.
• WebAIM’s introduction to ARIA

Activity

This activity is made for websites. It’s not made for Canvas courses because Canvas courses typically shouldn’t use ARIA. The activity includes making a plan to fix existing ARIA and a plan to create accessible HTML content with ARIA going forward.

Steps for this activity are also included in Pope Tech’s What you need to know about ARIA article, so you could encourage individuals to start finding inaccessible ARIA or thinking of ideas.

Fix existing inaccessible ARIA content

1. Locate all the instances of ARIA on your website. If you’re a Pope Tech user, run an HTML or PDF detail report and configure it for only ARIA-related results. Otherwise, use WebAIM’s website evaluation tool to check individual pages for ARIA. If you’re checking individual pages, it might be helpful to keep track of them in a spreadsheet.
2. Go through the ARIA instances and determine if they are accessible.
3. If they aren’t accessible, assign updating it to someone.
4. Make an achievable goal depending on how many ARIA instances need to be fixed and share that goal with your team or office.
5. If you don’t have one already, schedule a monthly accessibility check-in (even if it’s just you) to celebrate progress and remove blockers.

Creating accessible ARIA content

Identify who regularly works in HTML and make a plan with them on how to make any new content accessible going forward. Some questions to consider:

• Do the people who work in HTML need additional information about ARIA?
• Will someone be a QA specifically for accessibility?
• Will they use Pope Tech or WebAIM’s evaluation tool as part of their own QA process?