DjangoCon Europe 2023

Django Accessibility for Everyone
2023-05-29 , Music Hall

Ever wondered how accessible your sites are? We’ll go through what we learned working with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), rebuilding their website with Wagtail and Django.


Video: https://youtu.be/bflB8xZmSNw

Web accessibility is a hot topic for good reason. But it can also be daunting to know where to begin. As a junior developer, I want to take you through the important lessons I’ve learnt so far in my Django and accessibility journeys, and how you can incorporate them into your own work.

We will first introduce web accessibility and showcase common pitfalls / best practices for a wide audience, and then delve into the lessons we learnt from building a new website for the Royal National Institute of Blind People - where accessibility goes far beyond alt-text and high-contrast designs.
We’ll also demo specific testing and QA methods all developers can pick up right away.

Outline:
- Web accessibility 101: standards, legal requirements, how to approach it
- Common considerations for all websites
- Meeting the strictest requirements: RNIB-specific examples
- Live demo: QA and testing tools developers can use
- Takeaways for Django devs

Hey, I’m Lauren! I’m a junior developer with a passion for Django and accessibility. I’m very new to the game so I know how overwhelming it can be to try to incorporate all of the best practices into your daily work. I want to talk it through from the ground up and show how even simple changes we make to our code, can have a big impact on our users. And how, with a bit of careful planning, we can make the web a better place for everyone.