[Athen] Questions for Web Accessibility Coordinator Position

[Robert Spangler]

Good morning:

We are currently interviewing applicants for a new web accessibility
coordinator position, who will be responsible for evaluating web content
for accessibility, as well as advising people around campus on creating
accessible documents and forms.

One of the tasks we would like to ask them to do for us is to use a web
accessibility checker (such as WebAIM's Wave) to check a site for
accessibility.  This would be an expectation of the position, but we would
also like to ask them to do this during the interview and let us know what
they are finding as they're doing it, so that we can get an idea of their
attention to detail and thoroughness.  My only concern about this is I am
not sure of how accessible this tool is to screen reader users.  After
running it myself, I was able to check the "Details" tab to see all of the
errors and how many there were, but I was not able to read the icons that
show where exactly the errors are on the web page.  Is this tool not
accessible to the blind?  Is there a tool that is more accessible to the
blind?  If we have an applicant who is low vision, is it fair to ask them
to evaluate a site for accessibility using a tool such as this?  When I
evaluate a web site for accessibility, I simply try to navigate it and make
sure I can access everything, but this is certainly not comprehensive
enough for a formal position as it is going to be necessary to know exactly
where the errors are and how to fix them to comply with the WCAG standards.

Any feedback on the best way to evaluate a site for accessibility, on the
accessibility of WebAIM Wave and the process of someone of low vision
performing this task would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Robert

-- 
Robert Spangler
Disability Services Technical Support Specialist
rspangler1 at udayton.edu
Office of Learning Resources (OLR) - RL 023
Ryan C. Harris Learning & Teaching Center (LTC)
University of Dayton  | 300 College Park  |  Dayton, Ohio 45469-1302
Phone: 937-229-2066
Fax: 937-229-3270
Ohio Relay: 711 (available for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing)
Web Site: http://go.udayton.edu/learning
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20181031/d6fde949/attachment.html>