Group Spotlight: Accessibility/508 Shared Service

In honor of July being Disability Pride Month, we wanted to take this opportunity to spotlight a relevant capability area of FMP’s: Accessibility and Section 508 Compliance. We sat down with four members of FMP’s specialized Accessibility/508 team, Beth Chidester, Kayla Reid, Molly VanDorick, and Emma Wright to learn more about how they got started in this field, the role of AI in their work, their favorite tools, and more!

How did you get into the world of accessibility and 508 compliance?

Emma: I first became involved in this world on a project here at FMP. I quite enjoy meticulous tasks, and I feel strongly that resources should be available and easy to use for everyone. Work in the 508 compliance sphere was squarely at the intersection of these two things, so it captured my attention almost immediately. I was lucky enough to have a manager who was also interested and skilled in this area, so I learned a lot from her early on and was able to join more projects that required compliance. I’m now always looking for opportunities to learn and my put knowledge to work!

Kayla: I initially was introduced to the world of accessibility when creating academic planning resources for college students. Through this process, I was shocked to learn that many common techniques and practices for creating documents within Microsoft or Adobe aren’t accessible. It’s important that everyone is able to access the information and tools that they need, so learning how to support this through the creation of accessible documents quickly became a passion of mine. So much so that I was inspired to earn my certificate as an Accessible Document Specialist (ADS) from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals!

Beth: I was introduced to 508 compliance when I was earning my master’s in education. Once I started at FMP, they had asked if I was interested in getting my Trusted Tester certification. Since I already had some background knowledge of 508 compliance, it was something I was definitely interested in obtaining. Since then, I have continued to support FMP in making documents and courses compliant across a variety of clients.

Molly: My manager, Amanda Palla, introduced me to the basics of 508 compliance during my onboarding process at FMP. Before joining FMP, I wasn’t aware of the depth required to make electronic documents accessible. FMP gave me the opportunity to learn more about how to create accessible documents. I was excited to achieve the DHS Authoring Accessible Documents certification and recently completed the DHS Trusted Tester certification.

What are the current hot topics in this space?

Beth: A common challenge when making something 508 compliant is maintaining visual appeal. As such, an area of interest right now is finding ways to make courses and materials accessible without sacrificing interactivity and/or design.

How does AI factor into accessibility and 508 compliance? Do you use AI in your day-to-day accessibility work?

Kayla: From the perspective of creating accessible documents, there definitely are pros and cons to using AI. While there is great potential for AI to help everyone make their documents more accessible, the current tools cannot make a document fully accessible – this still requires human expertise. Microsoft has a tool, called the Accessibility Assistant, which will check your document for things like color contrast, appropriate document structure, table structure, and alternative text on images. Additionally, Adobe has an Accessibility Checker for PDFs and an automatic tagging tool which will tag PDFs for you. These tools are a great place to start, but I find they oftentimes fall short because they cannot understand the meaning behind a document. A large part of making a document accessible is understanding what information an author is trying to convey and the user experience for someone who is using assistive technology to access that document. By understanding this, you can make sure that content is being written and designed appropriately for accessibility.

For example, AI will be able to identify if there is an image in a document and flag that additional steps need to be taken. However, it won’t know if that image is a decoration (and should be marked as decorative) or if it is informational (and should be given alternative text). AI can automatically tag a PDF to make sure it has headings, but it’s not able to identify if it correctly assigned the heading levels. Additionally, AI can tell you if a table is formatted correctly for accessibility, but it’s not able to tell you that tables should only be used for data and not as a design feature to format written content or images. In all of these cases, it takes a human who understands the intended structure and content of the document to check the AI’s work and take the appropriate next steps. 

With that being said, I typically only use the accessibility checkers as a final “just in case” check. However, if you are new to making accessible documents, they are a great place to start! Microsoft’s Accessibility Assistant will even provide some additional information on how to fix a problem that it encounters, so it can be a good learning tool as well.

Beth: I can see AI factoring into both accessibility in the tools used to test courses/materials and improving accessibility features that are already in existence (e.g., automatic alt text, providing color contrast recommendations). However, I don’t think AI should be the final deciding factor on whether something is 508 compliant. There are many items (e.g., reading order, color being used as meaning, accurate alt text) that should still be confirmed by a person. For these reasons, I don’t use AI in my day-to-day accessibility work.

What relevant tools/resources have you found to be the most useful, both for learning and executing these skills?

Molly: LinkedIn Learning, CommonLook, and FMP’s internal professional development resources have been the most useful tools for both learning and applying accessibility skills. LinkedIn Learning is especially helpful for understanding how to make PDFs accessible. CommonLook, a PDF accessibility checker, helps confirm a document’s accessibility as you work. FMP has also provided professional development sessions and internal resources that support FMP’s continued learning.

Emma: I have found that any resource that offers hands-on experience is the most useful when it comes to this type of work. As with many skills, this one clicks the most for me when I can put it into practice and then receive direct feedback. It’s also been so helpful and motivating to have a community of specialists at FMP to engage with and learn from. Whenever I’m stuck on something, I can rely on my teammates to offer their expertise and brainstorm creative ways to make deliverables visually appealing and also fully accessible. 

Beth: I find the NVDA screen reader, color contrast tools, how-to videos, peers, and articles all to be helpful resources for me when it comes to 508 compliance.

Kayla: Coming from a higher education background, I love to understand the “why” behind things. The practices to make accessible documents are based off of the Word Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). As I was learning how to make documents accessible, I read through all of the guidelines. By doing this, I learned a lot not only about the practices to make things accessible, but why we need to take those steps to ensure an accessible user experience. Understanding the “why” gave me the flexible foundation I need to creatively approach a variety of documents to ensure that everyone has the best user experience possible.

Looking for support in making your products and services more accessible? Contact us today to learn how FMP could be your partner in 508 compliance.

Zoe Nerantzis joined FMP as a Consultant in May 2021 and works with the National Science Foundation team by supporting NSF’s learning and development branch. Zoe is from Rockville, Maryland and can generally be found reading fantasy novels, working out in her basement, or rooting for the Washington Football team.