deoostfrees / a11ybuddy

A platform for documenting, testing and sharing about digital accessibility for developers and users alike. Let's get together!

a11yBuddy

Tip

We are offering free accessibility consulting for Open Source projects for a limited time. Check out the "Free Consulting Offer" section below for more information.

What is it?

A11yBuddy is the software behind an innovative web portal that empowers everyone to report and track digital accessibility issues. The goal is to bring developers, designers and users of Software together by replacing hard-to-read audit results with abstract success criteria to true-to-life user workflows.

Developers and designers are additionally assisted by an audit wizard that helps them identify the most pressing issues with their application. This is going to be so simple that you don't need to be directly involved in software development to use it! So if your translation or community teams are up for it, they can use the tool as well, with virtually no downsides to developers doing it themselves.

Because everything on a11yBuddy is public, users with disabilities can use it to make informed decisions about whether a given software is accessible to them and where the real issues are. They can also use it to make qualitative reports to developers of an application, so they know exactly where to find and how to address an issue.

The hope is that this will contribute massively to an open and inclusive society, and for the first time ever, will make the state of digital accessibility visible to a public audience.

At some point during the initial development phase, we will launch a public instance of a11yBuddy, where everyone can test their own applications and contribute to the database.

Community

We are currently in the process of setting up a community around a11yBuddy. If you are interested in contributing, have questions about accessibility, or want to discuss the project, please join us on our Discord Server.

How will it work?

The following mockup describes roughly how the project will look like and how it will work. We are working hard to provide an interactive MVP in the coming weeks.

Funding

From March 2024 to August 2024, a11yBuddy's development is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the Prototype Fund by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. Thank you very much!

Free Consulting Offer

As part of this project and for our own learning purposes, we are able to offer limited and free of charge technical accessibility consulting for your own Free Software project. If you are interested, please send an email to [email protected], with some details about the project and information on the main issues you currently face in the realm of digital accessibility.

We won't be able to respond to all requests, but we will do our best to help as many projects as possible. Everyone is highly encouraged to apply, regardless of the project's size or the current state of its accessibility. Please do not apply if your project has commercial resources available for accessibility consulting.