Conference Accessibility
February-June 2022
Member of the Organizing Committee
As a member of the organizing committee for the conference "Encontro Sobre a Acessibilidade nas Artes e no Património", at the Faculty of Fine-Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL), I diagnosed the accessibility of its digital documents (Program and Book of Abstracts) and implemented measures to improve them.
Goals
The summit, which happened on June 2022, had the theme of accessibility and inclusion. Aligning with the values it proposed, we wanted to ensure its own accessibility.
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Ensuring screen reader compatibility of the Program and Book of Abstracts;
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Improving the accessibility and readability of the Book of Abstracts.
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Improving the Search Engine Optimization of the documents.
Diagnosing Accessibility
To diagnose the accessibility of the documents, I guided myself by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 and tested the PDFs with the screen reader NVDA.
Improving Accessibility
To ensure the accessibility, I applied and ensured that the documents implemented features such as:
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Adequate alt text for all images;
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Clear and hierachized headings structures;
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Color palettes with sufficient color contrast; adequate line spacing; and visual section dividers, to guarantee readability for people with vision;
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A table of contents hyperlinking to the corresponding chapters.
Improving SEO
Search Engine Optimization was, for the most part, a positive consequence of accessibility, and it was improved by:
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A descriptive title;
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Tagged with adequate headings;
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Tagged with adequate alt text;
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Completed with added keywords and a description/subject of the document in its proprieties.
Search Engine Optimization was only actively optimized through added proprieties on the Book of Abstracts.
