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Please review a new Accessibility Statement and Accessibility Policy
Here at Codidact, we believe that everyone deserves to have access to information and to be a part of a community. "Everyone" includes people with disabilities, and so that means making our site and posts as accessible as possible.
To make that clear to everyone, I've put together the following document. This document details both Codidact's Accessibility Statement - which makes our commitment clear, and gives some relevant information (such as what to do when encountering an accessibility issue) - and an Accessibility Policy, which explains on a technical level what standards we should be meeting and what the expectations are for code changes to Codidact-controlled spaces.
The current plan is to host this document at /policy/accessibility, and to add an "Accessibility" link to this page in both the footer and the "About the Network" section in the Help Center.
Please take a few minutes to review it before it goes live, and leave feedback as an answer below. I'm also happy to answer any questions or concerns that people might have.
The document begins after the horizontal line.
Codidact Accessibility Statement
Sharing information and being part of a community are the two fundamental goals of the Codidact Project. Everyone deserves access to information and to be a part of a community, and with that in mind, the Codidact Foundation is committed to accessibility in all areas of the Codidact Project.
Who is responsible for accessibility?
Accessibility is the responsibility of everyone, from the people writing posts to the people working on the website. However, the chief person responsible for accessibility in the Codidact Foundation is Mithical, Co-Lead for User Documentation and a member of the Board of Directors. Questions about Codidact's accessibility can be directed to support@codidact.org.
I'm encountering an accessibility problem, what do I do?
Please report any accessibility problems you have on Codidact Meta, using the [bug] and [accessibility] tags. That makes sure that we're aware of the problem, and we'll do our best to fix it as soon as reasonably possible with our available resources.
Technical details: Codidact Accessibility Policy
This Accessibility Policy outlines the technical details of our commitment to accessibility and sets expectations for what is in scope of that commitment.
The Codidact Network
The platform that the Codidact Network runs on, known as QPixel, should meet both the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 and the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 standards at the AA conformance level.
Since the platform is open-source and volunteer operated, setting strict timetables isn't realistic. However, new changes to the platform should be made with these standards in mind, including using Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) features.
User-contributed content
The Codidact Foundation encourages all people contributing posts, such as questions, answers, and articles, to make their posts accessible. This is done via system reminders, such as a warning when posting images without alt text, and via other users editing those posts to be more accessible.
By the end of February 2024, an in-depth guide to creating accessible posts will be published in the Help Center.
The "codidact.org" and "codidact.com" sites
The codidact.com and codidact.org static domains should meet WCAG 2.2. When those pages are updated, steps should ideally be taken to increase the accessibility of those pages. At a minimum, changes must not cause the accessibility of those pages to decrease. However, a full redesign is not in scope at the moment.
This document was last updated on [date].
2 answers
Just a minor concern: I don't think a single person should be the point of contact, maybe set up something like access@codidact.org. That is, if it even needs a dedicated mail address - I don't quite see why support@codidact.org address won't do?
If all accessibility concerns are routed to Mithical internally, that's all well and good. But I believe we should direct support requests to roles/titles rather than relying on a certain individual. Open source projects tend to suffer from people coming and going and on top of that, everyone's a volunteer. So someone else in the Codidact organization might have to step in during vacation/hiatus.
Well, it was committed to GitHub by the target date, but then things happened... But finally, the accessibility statement and the detailed accessibility guidance are both live in the Help Center on all communities. The latter contains a lot of helpful tips for making posts more accessible, ranging from technical (formatting) considerations to language considerations. Thank you to Mithical for all the work on this!
Accessibility is an ongoing process. If you find ways to make this accessibility help even better, please let us know on Meta.
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