Image of Google's inceptionism algorithm seeing dogs in pasta marinara.
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Until google stops seeing chihuahua's in your spaghetti and meatballs, its going to be up to humans to create useful text alternatives for images.
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## Accessibility at edX
.subtitle[Past, Present, Future]
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OK, so as I said, I don't have enough time today to go into any more details about how you can make your edX content or open source contributions more accessible. But I can tell you a little more about things we have done, so that you have less to worry about with regard to accessibility.
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## edX Accessibility Initiative
* Demonstrated commitment since our inception
* Gives the Open edX Platform a market advantage
* Important to our learners, partners, and community
* Is an important part of our Goals, Values, Vision, and Mission
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Accessibility is not a new initiative at edX. We have been requiring that all videos published to edx.org include text transcripts so that learners with hearing impairments can access their content. We've also had outside accessibility consultants perform two separate audits on our codebase to identify accessibility barriers and let us know where we had room for improvement. Accessibility is becoming a legal requirement in many parts of the globe, and we know its important to our learners, our partners and the Open edX community. Our commitment to accessibility is also pervasive in our Goals, Values, Vision and Mission.
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## Goals, Values, Vision, and Mission
* "Expand access to education for *everyone*." - Goals
* "Quality education for *everyone*, everywhere." - Vision
* "To create the world's leading learning destination site and platform so that *everyone* around the world can become better educated." - Mission
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You can see that the word "Everyone" appears throughout our Goals, Values, Vision and Mission. The word *everyone* is by definition "inclusive." It includes all humans, regardless of race, gender, class, creed, age, nationality, physical location, sexual orientation, or ability.
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## Accessibility Policy
![Screenshot of edX Accessibility Policy which is posted on our public website](assets/accessibilitypolicy.png)
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In 2014, edX decided to take their commitment to accessibility to the next level and hired an accessibility specialist. That's me. Then, on April 2nd, 2015 we defined a formal Accessibility Policy which outlines our commitment to making our website, mobile applications, and software platform accessible to individuals with disabilities and to make sure content providers can create accessible content. We decided to chose the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ("WCAG") 2.0 AA, published by the World Wide Web Consortium as the standard to which we would strive for. The policy is posted on our website, right in the footer and was distributed to our partners, staff and contractors.
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## edX Accessibility Roadmap
* Policy .status[*(complete)*]
* Support .status[*(complete)*]
* Documentation .status[*(complete)*]
* Training .status[*(complete)*]
* Outside Audits .status[*(annual)*]
* Remediation .status[*(ongoing)*]
* Conformance (WCAG 2.0 Level AA) .status[*(ongoing)*]
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Next, we created multiple mechanisms for soliciting feedback about accessibility and formalized our process for handling support requests from learners with accessibility concerns. We created comprehensive documentation with regard to publishing accessible content, and guidelines for making accessible open source contributions to the platform. We've trained every single one of our staff, and made training part of our onboarding process. We continue to schedule annual outside audits and have a formal process in place for finding and fixing accessibility bugs, and ensuring all new features comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
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## Measuring Compliance
.subtitle[Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0]
.thirdtitle[Our commitment is to conform with WCAG 2.0 AA]
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