We talked about WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) at a few meetups last year, and you may have heard that WCAG 2.1 was recently finalized as a W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) recommendation--with 17 new additions to the success criteria!

These updates to WCAG focus on improving the usability of new technologies that have become common since WCAG 2.0 was finalized in 2008. With this focus on usability, the majority of the new success criteria fit into general principles for good interaction design.

We’ve invited Erin Marchak, a Front End Developer Lead at Shopify, to help us understand how these guidelines reinforce the connection between accessibility and usability.

Erin will go over some key usability principles, and show you how to frame accessibility discussions within user experience instead of hard-nosed compliancy.

By using the carrot of good interaction design, and the stick of compliance, we will encourage others to look for ways to improve the accessibility and usability of the web for everyone.

In this session, you will learn:

• What’s new in WCAG 2.1
• Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics
• How to frame WCAG compliance as a usability win

How to prepare:

• Something for note-taking
• A laptop with your favourite text editor installed, in case we do a code-along (Don’t forget your charger!)
• An appetite for learning and snacks