Software

Prototyping and Version Control

Starting work on a software-based project might be daunting, but here's a few introductory resources to get started.

Figma is a popular application for creating framework prototype mockups of an app design - basically, you can easily create how an app on your phone or a website might look like or work like to the user, without all the features being built yet. Figma is free for students and educators. If you are prototyping a front-end, it's a good idea to start here.

MIT AppInventor is an intuitive, visual programming environment that allows everyone to build fully functional apps for Android phones, iPhones, and Android/iOS tablets. There are a few awesome examples on the About Us page that share some teams that used AppInventor to create assistive tech already!

GitHub is a code repository, a place to put the code you're writing so you can track your changes and collaborate with others. You can host a website directly from GitHub-hosted code on GitHub Pages. GitHub also has a Student Developer Pack with access to lots of helpful resources. If you will be writing significant amounts of code, you should use GitHub for version control.

Software Accessibility Considerations

When designing for accessibility, it's important to keep many principles in mind.

Screen-reader accessibility is the ability for screen reading software to read information to visually impaired people. This is important for all web and software with text. As part of screen-reader accessibility, you should check that the images you include in your software or web pages have alt text that provides a reasonable description of the image that can be read by a screen reader.

Likewise, color contrast is important to people with colorblindness. One useful article is here from Adobe. And a useful tool for generating color palettes with contrast is https://www.randoma11y.com/.

One such example of already existing software that helps to check if your software product is in compliance is

https://accessibe.com/accessscan.

The Firefox web browser also has a built-in colorblindness simulator as part of its Accessibility Inspector so you can check your websites and other browser-based software.

AI and Machine Learning Tools for Accessibility

TODO