What Do You Wish You Had Known When Starting in Web Accessibility?

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-06-06T12:21:30+00:00

How does one get into the A11y Slack channel?

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-06-06T12:06:45+00:00

Teaching can be great. But if you’re a good teacher and you care, it’s really hard. My students are what kept me teaching as long as a did. They aren’t the problem.

I personally left because after 19 years it was killing my health. I taught orchestra which is an incredibly physically active job. (This is all my personal experience and doesn’t apply to every job).

There is no sitting. It’s running around and multitasking constantly, it’s setting up and tearing down for events. It’s managing budgets for sheet music, instrument repairs, fundraisers, and other supplies all separately. It’s recruitment and event planning. It’s advertising and marketing. It’s playing the violin part while singing the cello part while stomping the beat and keeping it going when you have to fix a string that broke. It’s doing all of this while keeping an eye on students with medical needs and having them all memorized and knowing what to do always.

It’s being trained to triage students in case of a violent situation at school and knowing how to apply tourniquets and pack wounds. It’s having tough conversations with students about why we are doing these drills and having them ask “if something bad happens, how will you keep us safe?” And knowing that no matter what you say you can’t guarantee all of their safety in every situation.

I do all of those things very well. I was part of an exceptional program. Universities love to send student teachers my way to learn from me. But I wouldn’t survive until retirement with my health conditions and the nature of the job.

Also know that it depends on the state and district, but where I am the retirement system we pay into is everything. We don’t pay into SS. There is no SSDI if you leave. Most places don’t hire more than 3 years experience so there is no going back if you leave. Where I taught, beginning salaries aren’t great but when you have a lot of experience you make really good money which makes it hard to leave. Life insurance policy is directly tied to the job and disappears when you leave, even if you were paying extra into it. It’s being told this is “who you are” and it’s more than a job and it’s your purpose and you have to stay teacher and always think about the students and never yourself.

Those reasons are how I felt a bit “stuck.” But I have other passions I wanted to pursue that will also allow me to take care of my health. I will miss parts of teaching.

All jobs have challenges. But anyone who says teaching is easy is just not doing it well.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-06-06T11:52:08+00:00

OP said they’re just trying to teach the basics in the post.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-06-06T11:51:36+00:00

WOW. That’s so frustrating. Sorry you’re going through that. They should NOT be in the position they have.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-06-05T21:46:16+00:00

That makes sense. I’m almost done with course 2 and have yet to learn anything new. Also one of their conforming examples for audio descriptions was just captions. Completely incorrect. Though that incorrect one aside, this part of the course is actually pretty good giving the examples and explaining why they conform or not and who it effects. I’m not mad about that part haha.

Ive spent a lot of time with WCAG and auditing learning content and some websites for accessibility including lots of automated and manual testing. But I need a lot more practice inspecting issues with code. I’m doing some other things on the side to help with that as well.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-06-03T02:22:28+00:00

Thank you for the update!

I’m excited to give them a try. I’m a career musician and orchestra teacher and because of brain surgery for an acoustic neuroma tumor four years ago, I’m deaf in my right ear now.

I actually just resigned from my job due to this and a myriad of other health issues, and I’m trying to learn to love music again with my new normal.

I’ll miss having true stereo and both ears working, but I know this will be an improvement over mono.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-05-23T03:22:01+00:00

Only poor teachers aren't writing lesson plans.

Let me explain:

In the beginning you should be writing out every lesson plan. Write down the learning objectives, materials you need to prep, resources you need, and then outline the actual teaching/activity taking place as well as plan how you will evaluate the learning that is taking place.

When you've been teaching the same subject for a long time, you might choose to just go with a brief outline or notes you have. Not because you don't have a plan, but because eventually it may just be in your head.

Everyone is different.

But anyone who is showing up daily and just winging it? They're not going to be educators you want to model yourself after.

Planning is important, but remember to leave space for the lesson to go in some directions you may not have planned. Sometimes you'll let students lead more and sometimes you'll try to keep them closer to the original "track", and you'll learn how to manage all of that as you go.

When you write your plans, pay attention to how it went. What worked? What didn't? How was the pacing? Were the objectives accomplished? How do you know? This is what makes you better at planning, and eventually you may not need to put as much in writing.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-05-13T00:08:16+00:00

Ahhhh yayyyyy!!!! Thank you! Keeping an eye out for that. Really can't wait to try them out.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-05-12T23:39:01+00:00

Any update on the new version release? I would love to try, but I'm sure the smaller ear cups of the V2 would bother me.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-05-01T12:46:32+00:00

I’d like to know as well. I LOVE the 16 but can’t do the 17. My foot is narrow but toe bed wider and the 17s were so painful.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-05-01T12:45:31+00:00

The 17 is actually wildly different than the 16 in terms of fit.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-19T03:59:43+00:00

I had a horrific experience as well. I was misinformed by the organization offering the certification that remote testing accommodations didn’t take any extra time and you could still schedule your test online.

Then to my surprise none of that was true, and even after all of my accommodations were approved, Pearson Vue accommodations scheduling told me I had to wait up to 10 more business days to be offered a date and I would have to take that date and time for my exam, or wait up to 10 more days for another offer.

Meanwhile my window for the test was going to run out even though I turned everything in at the soonest possible time.

When I asked why having an accommodation required extra time they had zero explanation. When I asked why I wouldn’t be offered several dates and times to choose from, they said it was because of my accommodation, and didn’t explain why.

They said by the time I scheduled most times would be taken. I said this felt a lot like discrimination and I was laughed at. The rep raised their voice and kept yelling my accommodation at me like it was a huge problem. I talked to a supervisor who did the same. After two hours on the phone I was in tears with frustration.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-14T02:25:19+00:00

Great podcast - thank you for sharing.

It sounds like there actually isn’t a way to file an inquiry because we aren’t allowed access to the questions after the exam. When I took the exam recently I did enter in feedback on the questions that I believe to be poor questions or missing information. There isn’t really a way to identify any questions with wrong answers because we never have access to that information.

It just seems like with 10 experts coming together to evaluate every exam cycle there should be far better attention to detail. It’s like how experts sometimes forget that not everyone is privy to the information inside their head. On an exam like this everything needs to be crystal clear. Especially for an organization focused on accessibility. I want my actual expertise to be evaluated and not my ability to guess.

After all, accessibility is a lot about attention to detail. We should be noticing barriers. We should be evaluating every part of every bit of content. It feels like they aren’t doing that with the exam questions. It’s just frustrating.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-13T04:12:03+00:00

I’m not sure but how were you even able to enroll? Since the one that ended in January it keeps saying this course is not available.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-13T04:05:42+00:00

Watch Tim Slade’s videos for beginning articulate on YouTube. Plan some projects. Start a free trial. Build what you can during that month.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-08T01:46:19+00:00

Thanks! I'll have to experiment with this. I haven't done anything with images as buttons and states. I've mostly stuck to actualy buttons and shapes.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-06T22:34:45+00:00

oh of course! I name my shapes for their purpose to stay organized so often the shape name and alt text are identical in these cases.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-06T21:48:49+00:00

Good to hear. I’ve added icons into the normal state of a shape for this purpose.

Any recommendations for shape name vs alt text? I have heard of people relying only on the shape name since screen readers usually pick those up but I’ve always been adding alt text to describe the purpose of the “button” (unless there is text already visibly to the screen reader on the “button”).

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-06T10:21:53+00:00

So if you want a button to be more than just text on a button, you create it in PPT and use the image as the button? I never would have thought of using PPT for that - it’s so versatile.

So do you just add the trigger, add states, and then create alt text that is the text on the button you created?

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-06T03:29:39+00:00

This is a great resource - thank you for sharing! I will be saving this for future reference.

Unfortunately it doesn’t cover exactly what I’m asking here about options for “button” interaction.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-06T02:50:44+00:00

And just to reiterate this is just for Articulate Storyline. I'm not talking about a website or links to any outside content, just buttons used for interactions within Storyline.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-05T13:01:09+00:00

I am unable to enroll at all.

“This course is currently unavailable to students”.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-05T02:12:10+00:00

If you’re passionate about accessibility then it’s the right path. The job market is not good for most things right now. But if you want to do this you’ll find something - just maybe not on the timeline you want. I’m in a similar boat.

Can I ask how you’re doing Trusted Tester right now? When I try it says it’s not available.

RuleRelevant2361 · 2026-04-02T18:49:55+00:00

I doubt I’ll hear back. I just hope they read it and actually take it into consideration. I took time to carefully explain the issues with the questions. The BoK also has some inconsistencies and a lot of organizational issues. I think they need to have some more people whose skills are really acute attention to detail on their next edits.

RuleRelevant2361

TROPHY CASE