Today marks the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This year, we've partnered with Teach Access, an organization that aims to broaden accessibility knowledge among industry and academia, to detail multiple resources that can elevate your disability knowledge. We will be detailing resources available through Teach Access as well as those from the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)—free and comprehensive resources for educators, stakeholders, and developers seeking to improve their accessibility knowledge and practices.
We believe it is important to distribute this information due to the current widespread lack of accessibility knowledge among companies and academia. In 2022, Teach Access conducted an Accessibility Technology Skills Gap survey to understand the current state of accessibility knowledge and access implementation. For full details of participants and statistics, see the Accessibility Skills Gap page. Here, we detail select statistics that highlight the need for accessibility knowledge:
- 81% of respondents report that they have to supplement their team with outside consultants and contractors and/or have to invest in supplemental external training.
- Over 86% reported that they anticipate the demand for accessibility skills to increase.
- 2 out of 3 reported their products are less accessible than they want and that they have to invest in on-the-job training for employees.
- Only 3% reported almost all of their current staff of developers and/or designers have sufficient skills to meet the company’s goals.
- Only 2% reported that it’s easy for their organization to find candidates with accessibility skills.
Teach Access has produced a sizable number of free self-paced courses designed for educators who want to learn about implementing accessibility in their curriculum. The courses cover a wide range of topics, including Disability Basics, Web Design, Development, Game and Graphic Design, User Experience Design, Software Engineering, Technical Writing, Human-Computer Interaction, Content Development, and others. Courses are provided through Canvas, a widely-used online learning management system.
In addition to the comprehensive resources found in the Teach Access courses, the organization has also produced a high-level document for integrating accessible design into curricula. The information is contained in a free PDF titled Teaching Accessibility Fundamental Concepts & Skills. This document is currently being updated and will soon be hosted on the previously linked page in Microsoft Word format.
Resources for developers seeking to implement accessibility into their projects are also available. The Teach Access tutorial is a hands-on program that instructs participants and serves as an introduction to accessibility basics and best practices.
For organizations that wish to implement accessible digital products, Teach Access has created a toolkit aimed at those developing job descriptions and making hiring decisions. This toolkit details useful information to include in job postings as well as screening questions to assess the accessibility knowledge of potential candidates.
At AFB, we also aim to promote accessibility and usability knowledge through our resources. AFB operates a program for those entering the field of app and web development to teach needed accessibility skills. We offer all of our learning materials for free to the public on our site. In addition, our AccessWorld magazine provides information for developers, project managers, hiring managers, and others who have a stake in improving digital inclusion. AccessWorld also publishes a podcast on similar topics and includes information on accessibility here on our blog.
For this blog post, we wanted to focus on comprehensive, free, and readily available resources that can be self-taught for improving digital inclusion. That being said, be sure to explore the programs offered by Teach Access for students seeking to elevate their accessibility knowledge or educators who would like to implement accessibility into their teaching. Likewise, check out AFB's Talent Lab program for information on our internship and apprenticeship programs focused on accessibility and usability.
Overall, much of accessibility is a solved problem with resources such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) providing highly detailed standards on making websites and apps accessible, along with examples for web developers in particular. It's never been more possible to create a digitally inclusive project than it is now. While accessibility continues to expand into new areas of digital technology, a key way to drastically increase the adoption and development of accessible digital technology and products is to ensure that everyone has the knowledge needed to make accessibility a reality.
