After my recent post about the importance of WCAG in today’s digital environment, the creative juices really started flowing. I began thinking not just about awareness, but about how we can build meaningful, hands-on learning opportunities for faculty, staff, and design teams who want to embed accessibility more deeply into their work.
With that in mind, I’ve started drafting a set of accessibility-focused workshops, each one targeting a specific audience and skill level. These are designed to be practical, collaborative, and adaptable—whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your accessibility practice. They’re all works-in-progress, but I did start playing around with slides for one of them. I hope you find these helpful!
1. WCAG 101: Foundations of Accessible Digital Content
Audience: General staff, content creators, course designers
Duration: 90 minutes
Workshop Goals:
- Introduce the core principles of WCAG (POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust)
- Discuss the importance of digital accessibility for inclusion and compliance
- Provide actionable tips for creating accessible text, images, links, and multimedia
Outline:
- Introduction: Why WCAG matters—legal, ethical, and user-centric arguments
- WCAG Principles Overview: Explanation of POUR with examples
- Common Pitfalls: Color contrast, alternative text, link naming
- Quick Wins: Simple things you can do today to improve accessibility
- Hands-on Activity: Identify and correct accessibility issues in example documents or pages
- Q&A
A lot of the good stuff is the speaker notes, so be sure to review the entire slide deck.
2. Designing with Accessibility in Mind: WCAG for UI/UX
Audience: Designers, developers, product managers
Duration: 2 hours
Workshop Goals:
- Understand how design decisions affect accessibility
- Apply WCAG principles to UI components (navigation, forms, modals, etc.)
- Learn to conduct basic accessibility evaluations during the design phase
Outline:
- Introduction: User personas with disabilities and how they interact with design
- Design Pitfalls: Inaccessible color schemes, insufficient focus indicators, poor visual hierarchy
- WCAG in Practice: Designing perceivable and operable interfaces
- Activity: Redesign a flawed interface using WCAG guidelines
- Tool Demos: Use of contrast checkers, keyboard navigation, and screen reader emulators
- Discussion: Embedding accessibility into design reviews
3. Manual Accessibility Testing: Going Beyond the Tools
Audience: Developers, QA teams, accessibility leads
Duration: 2.5 hours
Workshop Goals:
- Learn manual accessibility testing techniques in line with WCAG success criteria
- Understand where automated tools fall short and human judgment is needed
- Practice using assistive technologies for real-world insight
Outline:
- Introduction: Why manual testing is essential for compliance and usability
- Guided Walkthrough: Manual tests for keyboard navigation, focus order, screen reader experience
- Demo: Using NVDA or VoiceOver to evaluate a live webpage
- Activity: Participants conduct a manual review of a sample site
- Reporting Best Practices: Writing actionable accessibility reports
- Group Reflection: Share findings, challenges, and takeaways
4. WCAG for Multimedia: Accessible Audio, Video, and Visuals
Audience: Content creators, media production teams, instructors
Duration: 90 minutes
Workshop Goals:
- Learn how to make audio, video, and visual content WCAG-compliant
- Understand captioning, audio descriptions, and transcript requirements
- Explore tools and workflows for producing accessible media
Outline:
- Introduction: The importance of accessible media in education and communication
- WCAG & Multimedia: Specific guidelines for time-based media
- Techniques: Captioning, descriptive transcripts, contrast in visuals
- Tool Demos: YouTube caption editor, Amara, Kapwing, Otter.ai
- Activity: Evaluate and improve an existing media asset
- Best Practices: Embedding accessible media in platforms like LMS or CMS
