2019:A11y

Accessibility

Welcome to the landing page for the accessibility space at Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm!
Contact: Eyitayo Alimi & Kayode Yussuf

Short description

Accessibility - fondly called a11y - is an effort to design and create digital tools that improves accessibility and can be used by everyone. The impact of a11y web standards and techniques can never be overemphasized as it supports assistive technologies to interpret web pages. The message is while curating content for the web, be open to accessibility in your audience and any accessibility issues. Basically, be aware that some of your audience might not be able to:

see well or at all;
hear well or at all,
move well or at all,
speak well or at all, or
understand the information presented in some ways well or at all.

Background

Out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, persons living with disabilities were mentioned 11 times, meaning that 11 goals were focused on improving their lives. a11y will help push for the realization of those global goals as relating to the Wikimedia movement and her sister projects.

Relationship to the SDGs

Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing.

Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages Target: Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks. Wikimedia is doing fairly well in the area of medial and health content on the web and the WIKI Med project has really helped in putting out contents on medical research, risk,warnings and prevention of certain diseases but yet, how does Wikimedia ensure that people living it accessibility challenges can have access to Wikimedia health content to be forewarned about their health?

Goal 4: Quality Education.

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all Target: Build and upgrade education facilities that are children, disability and gender friendly. Education facilities should provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all. There cannot be an education for all when other people with a disability do not have access to educational resources on the web. According to also to the Wikimedia movement, they cannot be open knowledge for all when some part of the population does not have access to Wikimedia resources just because they have special needs. Without a11y, what happens to people living with a disability when reading from the Web?

Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.

Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all Target: By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value. People living with disabilities today are being discriminated against when it comes to hiring and employment and the employers are very quick to think that they cannot do their jobs because they are unable to use technical tools and most times when they try to visit the web for learning, they couldn’t because the contents on the web is mostly incompatible with assertive technologies. Will Wikimedia be the go-to hub for such content?

Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.

Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation Target: Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in the least developed countries by 2020. With innovation and technological advancement with respect to ICT and affordable access to the internet, it is important we make technology accessible with people living with a disability because they should also be a part of the industrialization. How will Wikimedia promote a11y for sustainable industrialization to foster innovation?

Goal 10: Reduced inequalities.

Reduce inequality within and among countries Target: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or another status. There is no way inequalities can be reduced in countries if some people have access to web content while others do not. How does Wikimedia intend to champion a11y through its country chapters, user groups and thematic organizations?

Topics

Topics proposer wants

The kinds of topics needed within the space are topics proffering solution and technologies to the challenges experienced by people living with disabilities or disabled people with respect to accessing Wikipedia and other sister projects.

Topics the community wants

Feel free to send in emails to suggest topics or better still drop them below

Discussion

Questions? Comments? Write them here!

Linkhub of everything (?) related to accessibility and usability

Briefly: See mw:Accessibility and usability cleanup

Context: I wanted to point everyone to that linkhub page, where I think we've collated almost all (?!?) of the related existing links. Much help is going to be needed to resolve the existing mess, and to make sure the mess doesn't get much worse. But there's gold in those links! Hopefully knowing about the linkhub, can help us prevent wheel-reinvention, and perhaps jump-start some ideas for sessions or personal projects.

I'm looking forward to this Space, and learning more about the area, how we can help, and what needs to be prioritized. Thanks for organizing it! (Feel free to move/refactor this comment) Quiddity (talk) 08:25, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Personalised search

I think personalised search may cause a problem in accesability. If Google or Facebook doesnt display you some sites, even you are are asking, thats the problem. But you still have a Wikipedia. But what about those, who writes wikipedia? If they look for resources and due to this feature they cannot find all resources on a topic, they cannot broad to Wikipedia NPOV information.Juandev (talk) 22:44, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah, Many thanks for stopping by.