Accessibility review of discussion.fedoraproject.org

I think discourse.org is great. They have done a good job with keeping things accessible, and also has a great community around them who care about this.

In our last DEI video meet, we discussed this topic.
Since we have made some modification on top of vanilla discourse to suit the Fedora Project, and we have our way of arranging things, it’s worth visiting the topic!

I would like to hear from others if they have any thoughts on this.

  • Do you know of a tool that can audit/validate accessibility of the website?
  • Do you notice any specific issues while accessing the website?
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One of the tools that came up was Google Lighthouse. I checked it out and here is the report.

According to it, we seem to be in great position.
But also, as it recommends manual testing - another resources that came out in our discussion is Checklist - The A11Y Project

Can we plan a small call to go through it together?

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Reflecting back on this, Discourse generally prioritizes accessibility and seems to do a decent job with this. There is some good context in this upstream thread:

Perhaps we may want to consider accessibility in another way though. Instead of auditing discussion.fp.o as an accessible tool, what if we frame accessibility in the context of how accessible or easy it is to engage and connect with the Fedora Community on discussion.fp.o? I see this as a more human-centered approach and focuses on the general contributor experience for people looking to engage and participate with the Fedora Community—which our Discourse site is definitely a huge part of!

Does this make sense? I could also be out of depth here. But given how widely Discourse is used here, I am thinking it does not make sense to invest a ton of resources and time into auditing for “machine” accessibility (is there a better phrase for this?). But we can focus on accessibility in the context of contributor experience, and possibly make concrete recommendations to better optimize Discourse to the admin team here.

Thoughts?

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Does this make sense?

Yes! Plenty :slight_smile:

But we can focus on accessibility in the context of contributor experience, and possibly make concrete recommendations to better optimize Discourse to the admin team here.

+1

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I agree with you @Justin. Accessibility means how easy it is for the users to access the resources. But the bigger question is how do we reach out to our user base to request them to access the accessibility and what improvement we can provide in order to improve here? A survey may be helpful? I am not sure how much a simple tweet will help here… Let’s draft a meaningful short survey and then share it via tweet and other social media channels? WDYT?

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I’m still getting used to my new notification settings for Fedora Discussion. :sweat_smile:

Good question, and it does need more effort than a social media post. Following the lead of the Fedora Limesurvey usage, we could create a campaign to answer key questions or test theories. We would likely need to engage with different groups like Fedora Mindshare (connection to users and contributors), Fedora Design (co-implementor of feedback), and Fedora Websites & Apps (co-implementor of feedback).

I’m open to coming up with a new set of questions. Some questions I mentioned in today’s meeting:

  1. What is the term of this survey? When do we want to run it, or are there other events in Fedora should be mindful of to avoid survey fatigue? (discussed about folding into annual survey)
  2. Who do we engage with first to come up with survey questions? How do we consider what to ask about accessibility and engagement with Fedora? Perhaps the Design Team?
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