Accessibility in Project Phases, From Planning to Release

Accessibility is often treated as something QA checks at the end of a project. Most of the decisions that determine whether a product is accessible are made much earlier, and they are made by different people on the team.
This session goes through the phases of a software project and covers what each role needs to do:

• Planning: deciding what level of accessibility the project is aiming for, and writing it into the requirements so it gets time and budget.
• Design: choosing colours, text sizes and layouts that people can read and use, and telling developers how the design should behave.
• Development: building pages that work with a keyboard, a screen reader and other assistive tools, and not only with a mouse.
• Testing: what automated tools can find and what they miss, and how to check by hand, ideally with people who use assistive technology.
• Release and maintenance: giving users a way to report problems, and checking again each time something changes.

The session is aimed at product owners, project managers, designers, developers and testers.
The South Africa Digital Accessibility Meetup is sponsored by ADG (Africa Developers Group).