Knowbility is committed to making the web a better, more inclusive place. Part of this commitment is being a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – the standards body for the web. W3C held their Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee (TPAC) meeting in Lyon, France. We sent Executive Director Sharron Rush, Board Member Katie Haritos-Shea and Web Accessibility Expert Eric Eggert to take part in Working Group meetings.

Katie attended the meetings of two groups. The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) works on developing and maintaining standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. The Accessibility Conformance Task Force (ACT TF) produces a standard testing format. This effort should help with consistent automated and manual accessibility testing.

Sharron and Eric attended the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) meeting. Eric is a Fellow with the W3C on behalf of Knowbility and acted as the team contact for the group. Sharron has served as Co-Chair of the EOWG since 2014.

EOWG discussed many topics to improve education about web accessibility. The group discussed updates to the tutorials for developers and the development of building blocks for accessibility curricula. Other topics discussed included the development of a list of UI accessible components and the implementation of translations.

One of the exciting opportunities at TPACs is that it is possible to meet with other Working Groups:

  • EOWG invited Internationalization (I18N) for the discussion around translations.
  • It coordinated with the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group (ARIA WG) on a common approach for educational material.
  • It met with the Silver Community Group (AG CG), which supports the research of the next major version of web accessibility guidelines.
Knowbility’s world-class accessibility training

Training is one of the things we do best and love to do! We have a catalog of 17 instructor-lead, hands-on accessibility trainings that we can deliver as-is or customize to suit your team. Browse our courses or sign up to attend our three-day accessibility conference, AccessU.

Browse our courses

A big part about EOWG is reaching out and increasing awareness of web accessibility. The group took the time that we had in person to brainstorm a few ideas on how to reach more people.

On Wednesday, during the Technical Plenary, Eric presented current educational resources:

TPAC is exhausting, exciting, and empowering at the same time. Working together with people from diverse backgrounds who share the same values and goals as you do is just amazingly beneficial to the development of the web.