The Washington Post has released accessibility guidelines for insiders and
outsiders using its open-source design system,
Launched last year, this
system made the code that powers The Post and its features publicly available for the first time. It was one of the initial projects led by Holden Foreman, the Post’s first
accessibility engineer.
“The Post is dedicated to making its content accessible to all, recently hiring its first-ever
accessibility engineer to make this possible,” says Arturo Silva, engineering lead. :Building on this commitment, we want to share our guidelines publicly so that others can also better serve a
wider community.”
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Silva adds, ““These guidelines are not requirements, but instructions informed by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and supplemented with real user feedback and online discussion in the accessibility community. We will be constantly iterating on these to make them as
up to date as possible.”
In addition, the Post felt strongly that ”this type of work should be available
widely in service of people with disabilities ,” adds Brian Alfaro, design lead. “Including these accessibility guidelines in our design system allows us to standardize and
centralize this information, both for The Post and for outside individuals using our open-source system.”
The
guidelines include an accessibility checklist, testing strategies
and considerations to make when creating online content. They cover::
- Accessibility Checklist
- Audio and Video
- Color
- Plain language, symbole and forms
- Semantic HTML and ARIA
- Alt text
- Automated testing tools
- Keyboard accessibility
- Screen readers
- Text size, fonts and zoom
settings