AT Familiarity

Overview

You should demonstrate that you are familiar with at least two different accessibility technologies.

Best practices

As part of your accessibility work, it is essential that you develop basic skills using a range of accessibility technologies. Automated tools alone, and even inspection, are not sufficient to fully assess the accessibility of a thing, you must also try it out sometimes.

When selecting accessibility technology, ensure that

The technologies you ask to be evaluated on are not very similar and/or address different accessibility needs. For example, if you ask to be evaluated on a web based screen reader, and then NVDA, those would be too similar.
The technologies you select are used by disabled people.

Some examples of technologies that would be good to familiarize yourself with

The free screen reader on your primary computer and/or on your phone. Most of these come with tutorials that you should complete before using the screen reader to test accessibility of a document. Here is a great overview of web accessibility testing with screen readers. Here is a quick guide to screen reader commands
The free magnifier on your primary computer and/or on your phone
Changing color and/or contrast in your operating system or web browser
Using the single switch input method on your phone

Rubric for this Competency

Excellent: Shows awareness of use cases and how the AT works; additionally the two ATs are sufficiently different to demonstrate breadth
Competent: Less deep but is generally correct and complete
Not Competent: Very shallow or significant errors present

Typical Handin for this Competency

Information about how each AT works, users, and strengths and weaknesses of the AT.
Information about what disabilities can benefit from it. For example, screen readers are not just used by blind people.
Any sources you used to answer these questions (first person accounts, research papers, etc). If you use Generative AI, you still need to check and cite relevant references.