How can you learn and keep up with accessibility standards and guidelines for Information Architecture?

1 Learn the basics

Before exploring the specifics of accessibility standards and guidelines, it is essential to understand the fundamentals of accessibility and why it is so important for IA. Accessibility is not just a legal requirement or ethical duty, but also a business opportunity and user benefit. It can increase the usability, performance, and reach of your products, as well as your brand reputation and customer loyalty. Moreover, accessibility can help you create more diverse, inclusive, and empathetic IA that takes into account the needs and preferences of different users, such as people with disabilities, older adults, people with low literacy, people with low bandwidth, or people using different devices or languages.

To get acquainted with the basics of accessibility, you can read some introductory articles like “What is web accessibility?” by W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), “Accessibility for everyone” by Laura Kalbag, or “The A11Y Project: A community-driven effort to make web accessibility easier”. Additionally, you can watch some videos like WAI’s “Introduction to Web Accessibility and W3C Standards” or “Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore the Impact and Benefits for Everyone” as well as “Inclusive Design 24: A free 24-hour online event for the global community”.

2 Follow the standards

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the most widely recognized and adopted standards for web accessibility. WCAG provides criteria and techniques to make web content accessible to people with various disabilities, such as visual, auditory, cognitive, motor, or speech impairments. These standards are organized into four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Each principle has a number of guidelines and success criteria, with three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA. To follow the standards, you can use WCAG 2.1 (which includes 17 new success criteria since WCAG 2.0), the customizable quick reference to WCAG 2.1 requirements and techniques ("How to Meet WCAG 2.1"), the guide to understanding and implementing WCAG 2.1 ("Understanding WCAG 2.1"), and the future version of WCAG 3.0 (which is currently in development and aims to be more flexible, inclusive, and applicable to different technologies and contexts).

3 Apply the guidelines

Adhering to the standards is not enough to create accessible IA; you must also apply the guidelines to your IA processes and practices, such as research, design, evaluation, and documentation. This means not only verifying the compliance of your products, but also integrating accessibility into your IA strategy, goals, and principles. Furthermore, it requires involving and engaging with users with disabilities and learning from their feedback and insights. To apply the guidelines, you can use resources such as WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1, Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.1, Inclusive Design Principles, Accessibility Heuristics, and an Accessibility Checklist.

4 Stay updated

Accessibility standards and guidelines are constantly changing as new technologies, research, and user feedback emerge. Consequently, it is essential to stay updated on the latest developments and trends in accessibility and IA. Doing so can help you acquire new abilities, approaches, and tools, as well as uncover new opportunities, issues, and solutions. To stay informed, you can utilize the following resources: WAI News, WebAIM Blog, A List Apart, UX Matters, Smashing Magazine, A11Y Weekly, A11Y Talks, and A11Y Podcast. These provide updates on WAI activities, events, publications, resources related to web accessibility and disability design/development/meaning of web content insights/inspiration for the user experience community reliable/useful information for web designers/developers the best accessibility articles/resources/tools accessibility experts/advocates topics related to accessibility/digital inclusion.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?