10 Minutes a Day: Learning Accessibility in An Agile World
Tags: a11y, webdev, html, programming
Published: 2022-01-21 12:58:52

Let's face it, in the world we live in where development is moving at light speed, it can be tough to make time to learn anything new. Accessibility is no exception to this. 

One added factor with accessibility is, unfortunately, having a stigma of taking up "too much time" and being "difficult" to learn. This is why most developers have no idea where to start and ultimately quit trying to take the time to learn. 

The good news is, I have found a potential solution that I have tried with multiple different development teams that has shown some very good results with getting development teams on board with accessibility! 10 minutes of accessibility a day!

## Why 10 Minutes A Day?

The idea of 10 minutes a day came from feedback I once received from a development team lead who told me "We do not even have 15 minutes in the day to do trainings or research accessibility". Naturally, I said "So you have ten minutes?".

Thus, the idea was born to offer the challenge to the development teams I worked with to take 10 minutes on accessibility. They either would do a training or course  or read an article related to accessibility. This would give a legit focus time to the subject of accessibility without any distractions and no complaining on the amount of time. 

## The Results

As minor 10 minutes may seem, the impact is and was massive! The development teams that took the 10 minute challenge began to see how simple changes in the way they developed could make their content accessible. 

You began to see more care in the output of HTML content created. You also began to see more time being set aside to learn more on the subject! 

## Where To Find Materials? 

The usual question asked to me right after a development team starts the 10 minutes challenge is "Where can we find articles or trainings". Luckily, I have ways to find articles and training courses to use!

### How to Find Articles

The best way to find articles to read up on accessibility is to subscribe a newsletter that contains articles that are great for gaining accessibility knowledge. Here are just a few: 

* [The A11y Project] (https://www.a11yproject.com/newsletter/)
* [A11y Weekly] (https://a11yweekly.com/)
* [WebAIM News Letter] (https://webaim.org/newsletter/)

### How to Find Trainings or Courses

The best way to find trainings or courses on accessibility is to ensure they are written by accessibility companies or experts in the field. Don't fall for courses that say "contains accessibility" as part of a larger course on a language or framework as it may only be a small subsection of content. 
Here are places to find great course content: 

* [W3 Accessibility Foundations (Free)] (https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/foundations-course/)
* [Udacity Web Accessibility (Free)] (https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891)
* [Creating Accessible Websites - Udemy (Paid)] (https://www.udemy.com/course/creating-accessible-websites/)
* [Deque University (Paid Subscription)] (https://dequeuniversity.com/)

## In Summary

You are probably thinking to yourself, "10 minutes is not a lot of time at all, so how can this even work?". In my short time in getting developers to try this approach the results have only been positive. I am a firm believer that 10 minutes is only the starting point to get developers to dive into accessibility. 

The goal is to get 10 minutes to turn to 20 minutes. Then 20 minutes to 40 minutes and 40 to an hour. You then have a developer that has now fully engaged and ready to ensure all content they create is accessible at the end of each sprint!