Minnesota Celebrates Global Accessibility Awareness Day!
May 21st marks the 8th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). As a leader in digital accessibility, the State of Minnesota participates in GAAD every year. Minnesota’s contribution to this year’s celebration will be a virtual event, “Stories of Inclusion: State Government Accessibility.”
Because not everyone can be at the May 21st event (noon, CST) or wait for the recording to be posted, read on to learn just a few of the ways the State of Minnesota is ensuring full digital accessibility for citizens and employees. In Celebrating Digital Accessibility in the State of Minnesota we share great work being done by the Minnesota Department of Health, State Services for the Blind, and the Minnesota Department of Revenue.
Striving to Improve:
The Journey to a More Accessible Website
By Rebecca Oestreich, Electronic Information Accessibility Coordinator, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) provides critical information to Minnesotans and its visitors about the state’s parks, trails, environment, and so much more. We work hard to ensure that all our website visitors can access our content so we were excited to find ourselves among the top five percent of the most accessible homepages in the world according to WebAIM, a nonprofit that provides web accessibility solutions. Our work didn’t happen overnight, of course. It’s the result of years of effort by many of our DNR and Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) staff and sustained support by our agency leadership.
In February 2020, WebAIM conducted an accessibility evaluation on the home pages of the top 1,000,000 web sites by using the automated web accessibility evaluation tool, WAVE.
The test found that the DNR homepage had zero accessibility errors, and WebAIM ranked DNR as 18,324 out of one million others. In February 2019, we were ranked as 88,261 out of one million.
While the test showed that we had zero accessibility errors, that does not mean that our homepage is fully accessible. Automated testing tools, like WAVE, can only detect 25 percent to 35 percent of potential errors. Manual testing is necessary to find the remaining issues.
Want to join us in the top 5 percent?
Rebecca shares a few tips that might help you on your Journey to a More Accessible Website.
Communicate Inclusion: Accessible Email Checklist
There are many ways we know someone wants to include us in an activity. If your colleagues want you to join them for lunch, they make sure there is a seat at the table for you. If they want you to be a part of a work group, they may avoid scheduling the meeting on the day you need to pick up your child early from day care. Emails also have these subtle cues that indicate you want to include your colleagues.
With many people working from home, there has been a sharp increase in the use of emails. Whether you are emailing a group of colleagues, or your entire department, take the time to send accessible emails. If you are a State of Minnesota employee you are required to follow the State of Minnesota Digital Accessibility Standard, which includes emails. But more than that, accessible emails communicate to our colleagues with disabilities that they are valued members of the team.
Take some time on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and throughout the year, to brush up on your accessible email skills. Here is an Accessible Email Checklist.
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