Presenters: Patrick Dunphy accessibility specialist from the CBC
@PatrickDunphy | Co-lead #a11yTO with George Zamfir (@goodwally) and Billy Gregory (@thebillygregory)
This was my fifth session at the CSUN conference on Friday, March 6. I’m always interested in hearing about how very large – particularly media companies – approach their accessibility remediation efforts.
What is CBC?
- We’re a publicly funded Canadian radio, tv, online
2020 Strategy
- Intensify relationship with citizens with disabilities
- 13.7% of Canadians self-identify as having a disability (3.8 million)
- However, no captions for recent olympic coverage
- Silver tsunami is coming…
We’ve Been Busy!
- Launched cbc.ca/accessibility to gather feedback on what’s wrong
- GAAD: Global Accessibility Awareness Day
- 4-part learning series
- Accessibility inquiry form for intake
- Developing an internal knowledge base (Confluence)
- Accessibility task force (July 2014) got everyone involved: IA, design, SME, QA, PM, Apps, Architect, Content, UX, management
- Jumped into agile in a big way (which was not without it’s bumps)
In October 2014, We Committed to a 4-year Rollout Plan
- We will make our digital content meet WCAG 2.0 AA standards by April 2018. Digital operations is leading this effort, with 8 product teams using agile methodology.
- We completed a gap analysis with The Paciello Group
- Identified training needs
- WCAG2.0 training for devs, designers, and QA analysts
- Accessibility requirements identified for 3rd party vendors
Gap Analysis
- Task force meets weekly
- First, we reviewed 25 cbc.ca screens across CBC, CBCNews, CBCSports, CBCRadio, Network
- Summary of gap analysis identified a range of issues likely to significantly affect the ability to interact with CBC.ca; lots of work had been done, and moderate level of effort would be required to get it up to scratch.
- Screen reader training
Learning & Development Initiatives
- Lots of checkpoints to think about what we want to get to, and narrowed it down into what was feasible
- Onboarding process
- Q&A webinars
- Moderated forums
- Printable cheat sheets
- Code samples
- Bi-annual training
- External assistance