Add accessibility statement

[isabela-pf]

This is a draft accessibility statement edited from the W3C Accessibility Statement Generator Tool. It only applies to JupyterLab.

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Below are thoughts copied from quansight-labs/jupyter-a11y-mgmt #52.

Things I think we should add

From Make your website or app accessible and publish an accessibility statement - Gov.UK, there are a few things we need to do. I've added check boxes to the quote to show what I think is covered in the above draft.

Your statement needs to cover:

• whether your website or mobile app is ‘fully’, ‘partially’ or ‘not’ compliant with accessibility standards
• if it’s not fully compliant, which parts of your website or mobile app do not currently meet accessibility standards and why (for example, because they are exempt or it would be a disproportionate burden to fix things)
• how people can get alternatives to content that’s not accessible to them
• how to contact you to report accessibility problems - and a link to the website that they can use if they’re not happy with your response.

With this and the other resources, I think we may want to add

• How people can get alternatives to content that's not accessible to them (mentioned above).
• An accessibility monitoring methodology section (ie. the testing work). This could be a link to a document that goes more into detail about this process since I doubt it is the main focus for everyone reviewing this statement.
• Maybe a note about open source. We'd have to be sure not to let this sound like an excuse, but rather a note about response times and that there's no support for this work.
• A way for people to report they'd like to be reached out if/when we are testing (like Gatsby's Surveys and Research section). Since I think this could come off wrong, we may want to mention like "for outreach in any potential paid testing opportunities." At the same time, it'd be useful to know we have people available if we want to apply for funding this kind of work in the future.

What next

To move forward, I would like to know a few things.

• What seems to be inaccurate or missing from this current draft?
• What's on your wish list of statement additions?
• How would we like to collaborate on this next? Is it a good time to open a PR, or do y'all find it easier to iterate elsewhere first? Answer: iterating here is good.
• I filled this out for JupyterLab. Is there any supporting project we think should be included (ex. the notebook file)? Answer: Not now. We're scoping it, but mentioning that JupyterLab does not exist in isolation.
• Where should this file go?

[trallard]

Reviewed - added some comments and suggestions, nothing too major

[trallard]

• How people can get alternatives to content that's not accessible to them (mentioned above).
• An accessibility monitoring methodology section (ie. the testing work).

Agree - I propose we start this as a result of this initial testing phase.

• Maybe a note about open source. We'd have to be sure not to let this sound like an excuse, but rather a note about response times and that there's no support for this work.

💯 - this is completely acceptable and helps set clear expectations

• A way for people to report they'd like to be reached out if/when we are testing (like Gatsby's Surveys and Research section). Since I think this could come off wrong, we may want to mention like "for outreach in any potential paid testing opportunities." At the same time, it'd be useful to know we have people available if we want to apply for funding this kind of work in the future.

+1 on this - do we want to use an email for this? if so which would be best?

• I filled this out for JupyterLab. Is there any supporting project we think should be included (ex. the notebook file)?
  I think @gabalafou and @tonyfast would have better ideas but right now I can only think of retrolab and by inheritance from JLab: binder and JupyterHub

• Where should this file go?
  In the /docs directory - also we might want to ask folks in the projects above if they want to x-link to this from their own docs/repo for maximum coverage and avoid having 100 different statements in multiple repos

[gabalafou]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that the tl;dr of an accessibility statement for JupyterLab should be something like:

1. It sucks (as in, JupyterLab has a lot of egregious accessibility barriers)
2. But we care (we're actively working on it; here's a link to our roadmap)
3. And here's how to contact us (if you have any questions or concerns or want to get involved)

Do we feel that this accessibility statement conveys the essence of what we want to convey?

[gabalafou]

What seems to be inaccurate or missing from this current draft?
What's on your wish list of statement additions?

A link to the roadmap?

I filled this out for JupyterLab. Is there any supporting project we think should be included (ex. the notebook file)?

Because of the grant and my own mental well being, I have had to keep my focus a bit narrowly on JupyterLab. For me that includes paying attention to anything upstream (Lumino, CodeMirror) but giving carefully limited attention to anything downstream (Notebook v7).

Where should this file go?

An accessibility statement for JupyterLab should go in the JupyterLab repo, no?

Also I'm not as concerned about where the file lives as much as how to get to it. For example, I think if somebody visits the JupyterLab repo, they should be able to search the keyword "accessibility" and find a link to this statement on that page.

[isabela-pf]

Replying to non-inline comments!

@trallard

• I added a note about open-source response times under ### Feedback and Formal complaints
• I don't think we have any kind of private group contact point for testing or for the wider accessibility contributors, so if it makes sense to use my Quansight email we could use that. Edit: I've added a section to ###Feedback and Formal complaints, but I left questions on it in inline feedback. Edit 2: I've added a contact.
• I can add a note about JupyterLab being a foundation for other projects and that our accessibility is at least somewhat interlinked. I'm would rather not call out projects I don't think we've tested here, though I'm open if you have different thoughts. Edit: Added to ### Conformance Status
• I moved the file to docs/resources

@gabalafou

• I agree with you that that's a good structure for the statement. Do I think this does that? Eh… it does it very formally. I'm not confident it's approachable. I chose this mainly because it helped me get something done and gave me pointers to cover things I never would've though of in my inexperience.

We could group the headers differently, though, and still benefit from W3C's guidance. Like use the outline you mentioned as a base for three main sections and lower the hierarchy of the existing headers to be grouped under those, if you think that would help navigation. Edit: I added headers roughly like you described and reordered the sections according to that.

• I added a link to the roadmap under ### Measures to support accessibility. Thanks for the reminder!
• An accessibility statement for JupyterLab should probably have a presence in the JupyterLab repo, yeah. Probably in the docs and in the repo itself somewhere. Do you think it should only be there, or does it belong in both JupyerLab and jupyter/accessibility? I don't think I have a strong opinion on that.

[trallard]

I don't think we have any kind of private group contact point for testing or for the wider accessibility contributors, so if it makes sense to use my Quansight email we could use that.

I would rather just redirect folks to jupyter/accessibility instead of personal emails

I can add a note about JupyterLab being a foundation for other projects and that our accessibility is at least somewhat interlinked. I'm would rather not call out projects I don't think we've tested here, though I'm open if you have different thoughts.

👍🏽 this sounds like a good approach

Thanks for all the work here @isabela-pf

[trallard]

I think this is almost ready for merge? correct me if wrong @isabela-pf

[isabela-pf]

@trallard I personally think this is clean enough to be merged. There's still some feedback I haven't addressed which is why I hadn't pushed for it. The core of the draft statement is here, though.

[trallard]

The question on adding this to the JLab repo will be discussed in the upcoming a11y meeting.
We can then proceed with either opening a PR with the statement or a PR linking to the statement here.

Apart from this - the PR looks good to merge, WDYT @isabela-pf ?

[isabela-pf]

I am okay merging this! I think there is a solid enough foundation to build upon here.

[isabela-pf]

@krassowski said add Linux!

[isabela-pf]

@krassowski said

• We are looking to support Edge
• Is it worth mentioning the things we want to support

[isabela-pf]

@tonyfast says this might be better as a table! Sorting tech by os, browser, assistive tech, so on…

[isabela-pf]

@tonyfast says this should be at the top. Note it's a living document.