Coco Design | Digital Accessibility

Coco Design is committed to providing your organization a digital web presence that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability. We can architect, design, develop, maintain, test, and even educate your organization to assist with WCAG 2.x accessibility guideline conformance. The Coco team targets ADA web accessibility requirements and internationally accepted World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards and guidelines.

Coco can help you make your organization's website better...
with insights on how to improve your website so that it is accessible and user-friendly.

Digital Document Accessibility Consulting & Training
Even though your website may be accessible, your online digital docs may not be accessible to people who are visually impaired. Imagine the brochures, support documents, manuals, forms, white papers and/or legal documents you may provide on your website as PDFs. Accessible documents enable people to read and navigate documents using a screen reader or other assistive technologies. Coco can help train your staff on how to create and maintain accessible online documents.

Fill out my online form.

Homepage Accessibility Compliance Test (Free)

Initial web accessibility evaluation of your current homepage based on WCAG A, AA conformance standards, Contact [email protected] for more information

Detailed Web Accessibility Audit

Details coming soon

Detailed Digital Accessibility Audit

Onsite digital accessibility process evaluation, Digital assets accessibility review, Accessibility testing and recommendations

Manual Screenreader Accessibility Audit

Scheduled screenreader audits by a blind web accessibility analyst using JAWS, NVDA, and/or Voiceover to provide a user-centered review and analysis of websites and other digital products. Screen reader audits available on during development and on a recurring schedule (3, 6, 12 months).

Executive Leadership Consulting

Defining digital accessibility, Understanding universal design, Embracing web accessibility, Supporting digital document accessibility, Introducing social media accessibility, Preparing crisis communications, Including procurement processes, Uncovering hidden digital accessibility blindspots, Evaluating the organization's players and systems, Developing an digital accessibility strategy, Nurturing a culture of inclusivity

Digital Document Accessibility Consulting and Training

Half-day and multi-day training options available, Up to 20 participants per training session, Digital Accessibility training available for: 1. Accessible Microsoft Word (DOCs), 2. Accessible MS PowerPoint (PPTs), 3. Accessible Adobe Acrobat (PDFs), Certification (coming soon)

Web Accessibility Misconceptions

Assuming that a one-time accessibility intervention will fix everything now and in the future
Assuming that automated accessibility testing is all that needs to be done
Assuming that all web designers and developers understand digital accessibility
Assuming that an accessible CMS guarantees content accessibility
Assuming that making “accessibility” a project line item means you're covered
Assuming that all PDF documents are accessible
Assuming that social media accessibility is not a thing

Web and Digital Accessibility Issues

Your website's visitors represent a spectrum of ability There are many reasons why people may be experiencing varying degrees of visual, auditory, cognitive, physical, and/or speech issues. Some people may have impairments from birth, an illness, a disease, an accident, or they may simply develop age-related impairments.

Visualimpairments represent a wide spectrum of ability from glasses, color blindness, contrast issues all the way to total, uncorrectable blindness. People with less severe visual issues may use tools to enlarge text, improve contrast or if severely impared may use a screenreader and keyboard commands (no mouse or touchpad). This area represents the majority of web and digital accessibility issues.
Auditory impairments range from mild hearing loss to complete, uncorrectable hearing loss (deafness). People with hearing issues may wear hearing aids and/or use closed captioning for audio or video media.
Cognitive, learning, and neurological issues may affect any part of the nervous system and impact how well people hear, move, see, speak, and understand information. Cognitive, learning, and neurological disabilities do not necessarily affect the intelligence of a person.
Physical or motor disabilities include weakness and limitations of muscular control (such as involuntary movements including tremors, lack of coordination, or paralysis), limitations of sensation, joint disorders (such as arthritis), pain that impedes movement, and missing limbs.
Speech disabilities is the difficulty producing recognizable speech with enough volume to be understood by people or voice recognition software.

Accessibility Acronyms and References

W3C - World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the internet. W3C website

WAI - The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) launched the Web Accessibility Initiative in an effort to improve the accessibility of the web for people with disabilities. W3C WAI website

WCAG - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). W3C WCAG website

ATAG - Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines are a set of guidelines for developers of any kind of authoring tool for web content: HTML editors, content management systems, learning management systems, social media, etc. The goal is for developers to create tools that are: are accessible to authors regardless of disability; generate accessible content by default; support and encourage authors to create accessible content. W3C ATAG website

A11Y - is short for the word “accessibility”. It represents the first letter, the last letter, and 11 letters in between. A11Y is a numeronym where numbers are used in place of letters to shorten the term. W3C is a numeronym for “World Wide Web Consortium”. A11Y is also used as a more convenient hashtag #a11y than #accessibility.

Technical Jargon

Assistive Technologies
Assistive technologies improve online access for people with disabilities. However, smooth operation of these technologies can be impeded by poorly planned web and/or digital document layout/design.
Primary assistive technologies used to interact with digital content: Screen Readers are used to help the visually impaired easily access electronic information. These software programs run on a computer in order to convey the displayed information through voice (text-to-speech) or braille (refreshable braille displays) in combination with magnification for low vision users in some cases. There are a variety of platforms and applications available including:

Web Widget - A web accessibility widget helps make smart modifications to elements on your site that we identify as potentially non-compliant or that may prevent keyboard-only navigation. And we do it all without requiring you or your developers to make costly adjustments to your website's existing codebase. Enlarging or reducing text size and images; Customizing settings for fonts, colors, and spacing...
Text-to-speech - Severely visually impared users may use one or a few of the following screen readers on their computer or mobile devices: JAWS by Freedom Scientific, NVDA by NonVisual Desktop Access Project, TalkBack by Google, VoiceOver by Apple, and Narrator by Microsoft.
Braille Terminal - Deafblind computer users may use an electro-mechanical device for displaying braille characters using a refreshable braille display.
Captioning - Deaf and hard of hearing users use closed captions or transcripts for the audio portion of multimedia or video content.
Universal Design - A way of designing a product, service or digital environment (website, digital document, mobile app, etc.) to be more inclusive so that people of any ability can easily use it.

// Digital Accessibility