Feel free to bring any web projects you’d like evaluated from an accessibility perspective or topics that are on your mind! (Please send us URLs for web sites/applications in advance so we can be prepared to discuss any issues or questions.)

The AInspector WCAG development team would like feedback on their new beta release. AInspector WCAG 2.0 (beta) fixes a number of long standing bugs with automatic evaluation of pages when a new page loads or the user switches tabs.

In addition to fixing bugs, a number of new features have been added:

• The Rule Result view provides additional details about element results, including: accessible name, visibility, color contrast ratio, and attributes.
• You can now export Summary, Rule Group, and Rule Results to an external file in either CSV or JSON format.
• You can now copy rule information to the clipboard to paste into documents.
• You can now copy element result information to the clipboard to paste into other documents.
• Updates the evaluation library to version 1.2 to support custom web controls.

If you would like to try out the new version before the Explore with Hadi meeting, follow these steps to load the beta version into Firefox:

1. Download the beta release ZIP file to a directory on your computer.
2. Type into the address bar: “about:debugging” (without quotation marks).
3. Select “This Firefox” button in the upper left corner of the screen.
4. You should see a “Load Temporary Add-on” button near the top center part of the web page.
5. Use the button to browse to and install the downloaded zip file.
6. The AInspector WCAG sidebar should pop open on the left side of Firefox.

We’re always looking for websites and topics to discuss! Email us any time and we’ll add your site/topic to the agenda for an upcoming meeting.

Technology Services needs to choose a replacement for the current Confluence wiki software running the Illinois Wiki. One important criterion is accessibility. There are currently 4 wikis under consideration: MediaWiki, BlueSpice, BookStack, and XWiki. Initial accessibility evaluation indicates that XWiki and BookStack may be the least accessible – the selection committee would like to get additional feedback to learn whether these wikis should remain in the set of options put before the University community for consideration, or ruled out as too inaccessible to merit further consideration. Additionally, feedback on MediaWiki and BlueSpice would be helpful as this wiki selection process goes forward.

Here are instructions for accessing the editing interface for each of these wikis:

• XWiki (sandbox site): create an account in this sandbox to try out page editing
• BookStack (demo site): log in with the following credentials to test the demo site:
  • User: admin@example.com
  • Password: password
• MediaWiki (sandbox page): edit this sandbox page, no login required!
• BlueSpice (demo site): log in with the following credentials to test the demo site
  • User: Testuser
  • Password: hallowelt

This month we're going to do something a little different: we're going to share with one another accessibility evaluation tools, aids, and other resources. Everyone is invited to share something they have found useful! Maybe you have a go-to tool for evaluating websites' accessibility or a tutorial you found particularly helpful for learning about an accessibility topic. Whatever it is, this is your opportunity to share something you know about with others who could potentially benefit from it too! You can share as little or as much as you like -- from a simple link to the tool/resource in the chat if you're feeling shy, to a live demo if you're feeling so inspired. Of course, you can also join in just to hear what others are using and learn about new resources!

The Web Implementation Guidelines Group (WIGG) presented several aspects of the Illinois Web Theme project at the IT Pro Forum last week, from the general Illinois Web Theme to the Illinois Toolkit to the Campus Drupal Website Framework and Campus branded WordPress Theme. Some members of the team will join us this week to discuss how they considered accessibility throughout the design and development process, in particular while developing Web Components for the Toolkit. The Web Toolkit test page shows the various components of the toolkit if you’d like to browse around.

Bring your questions, comments, and feedback to the discussion!