[a11y Process Work] a11y Champions Community Resurrection

[sara-amanda]

Resurrection of a11y Champions Community

"A11y Champs" Team Members

Feel free to add your name! Join us!

• Josh Kim
• Sara Smith
• Angela Fowler
• Eli

Goal: Community & Support

Feedback requested

We're a grassroots, volunteer-led educational program intent on scaling up VA's accessibility maturity through:

• co-design, curiosity, and community
• centering the diverse voices of disabled Veterans, caretakers, and family members
• asking questions first and learning from others

Editing & Reviewing a11y Champs

Assistance Requested

• Landing Page
  • [x] Readme.md rewritten for a11y champs drafted by Josh
  • [x] Review, pending - requested in 4/28/2023 a11y specialists meeting.
• Level 1, Community Member
  • [x] Rewrite of L1 drafted by Josh
  • [x] Reviewed - requested in 4/28/2023 a11y specialists meeting.
  • [ ] Integrate Level 1 Feedback into Level 1 Curriculum
• Level 2, Tester
  • [ ] Pending draft of L2
  • [ ] Review, pending draft of L2
• Level 3, Advocate
  • [ ] Pending draft of version of L3
• Level 4, Apprentice
  • [ ] Pending draft of version of L4
• Level 5, Champion
  • [ ] Pending draft of version of L5

[sara-amanda]

a11y Champs Feedback on Level 1

Based on Slack thread that included this feedback c/o @joshkimux on May 15, 2023. Updated in this thread as of 5/19/2023.

Provide multiple options or paths for different kinds of learning.

E.g. don’t force folk to read a bunch of things, give them the option to do something or watch something instead

“I liked being presented with multiple options and being able to choose what I wanted to do”

Encourage engagement on slack, but don’t make it mandatory or make folk feel like it’s mandatory. How can we make this more natural or easy?

e.g. would providing pre-written templates help? or should we focus on providing more options for folk to be heads down on their own without having to engage (unless they want to)

“I liked the engagement on Slack.”

“”I “dislike” posting questions/comments in Slack. Although, I appreciate the community aspect of it. Where it may take one person 30 seconds to post a…”

Folk can get distracted midway through the curriculum. How might we address the context switching of the workplace? Are there ways to make this easier?

e.g. breaking levels into sub-levels?

“I wasn’t able to sit down and complete it one sitting because I kept getting interrupted/distracted”

Expanded Feedback

@BobbyBaileyRB c/o Bobby on Slack on 5/15/2023

I agree with the "Folk can get distracted midway through the curriculum."

It might be helpful to break these into sub-sections within the Curriculum folders and allow people to choose their learning needs.

• Curriculum (folder)
  • Level 1 (folder)
    • Level 1 video learning format (folder)
    • Level 1.1 accessibility, compliance, and experience
    • Level 1.2 learn how to ask for help
    • Level 1.3 get started with your first screen reader
    • Level 1 completed and next steps
    • Level 1 written learning format (folder)
    • Level 1.1 accessibility, compliance, and experience
    • Level 1.2 learn how to ask for help
    • Level 1.3 get started with your first screen reader
    • Level 1 completed and next steps

This could really help us cognitively keep track of sections that were important to us. Instead of trying to remember where that impactful lesson was within the level 1 curriculum.

Provide specific VA related tasks.

“There were some quirks with the Mac OS voiceover training that I got stuck on and were frustrating.”

“The only thing I can think of (and maybe this is level two stuff) is associate a tasks with navigating the VA.gov with screen reader. Even if it’s just…”

[sara-amanda]

@eli-oat adding you to this ticket for your work on this project

[coforma-jamie]

It's been awhile since anyone's looked at this, and a few folks have left since this ticket was opened.

I think we need to ask a few fundamental questions about A11y Champs before we proceed with any work:

1. Who owns the A11y Champs program? Is it @artsymartha68? Is it Governance? CAIA? The accessibility COP?
2. Who should implement the rest of the program? Again, it could be one person, CAIA, Governance, the accessibility COP at large.
3. Is it a priority? If so, what does the timeline look like? And which parts of it should be prioritized:
   • Tweaking lesson 1 based on feedback (as mentioned above)?
   • Figuring out topics and structure for lessons 2 and 3?
   • Writing lesson 2, 3, both?

[coforma-jamie]

The OCTO accessibility community discussed the A11y Champs program at our weekly sync today. To summarize what we talked about:

• A11y Champs is a collective effort, originally spearheaded by Josh and Jennifer (who are no longer at VA). It's "owned" by the accessibility specialists as a group, not by a specific person or OCTO.
  • It would need someone to take the reins again, to get it moving.
  • But this might be difficult due to project work and because we don't have a mandate / directive to work on it.
• Currently, there's the beginnings of a draft of Level 2, written by @briandeconinck, and nothing for Level 3.
• @brea11y noted that there's a lack of information for mobile accessibility issues and testing, that A11y Champs could address down the line.
• We may consider linking out to the W3c EdX course, rather than re-creating the (training) wheel.

Next steps

Before doing anything more, we need to decide what we want the outcomes to be, for someone going through A11y Champs.

• Is this program meant to raise awareness, create new accessibility specialists, or something in between?
• What content would support that?
• What metrics could we track to see if we're meeting our goals?

@artsymartha68