Hey folks! At Fandom, it’s an important mission for us to help your wikis grow and be safe spaces for all users. A significant part of that is promoting web accessibility across the platform. In case you don’t know what this means (which is totally fine!), this is making sure your wiki content can be consumed by more readers, regardless of disability. I recently held a roundtable with the Fandom Stars to discuss the importance of web accessibility, which happens to be a close topic to my heart too. They provided some super helpful feedback on what Fandom can do to help wikis foster accessible best practices. With that in mind, I have some recent developments I’d like to share!
Accessibility statement
Accessible best practice has always been high in our minds at Fandom, but we know we need to take it further to create a better experience for all our readers. To help with that, we recently posted our annual Transparency Report which, this year, included an accessibility statement. For those of you who don't know what an accessibility statement is, its core goal is to publicly highlight Fandom's commitment to accessibility on the platform.
Right off the bat, the purpose of this statement isn't to celebrate how perfectly accessible the platform is. There are issues we need to work on absolutely, and this is designed to acknowledge those and what we're doing to address them. For all our readers, this statement serves as a guide to show:
- What we’re doing to promote accessible best practices
- What areas of the platform are currently not accessible
- Our conformation status to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) (the globally recognised standard for measuring web accessibility)
- How users can report accessibility issues and give feedback
This statement will evolve over time as global best practices and our internal processes shift. Please do comment below if you have any questions on this! Read more about the purpose of accessibility statements.
Accessibility resources
Part of the accessibility statement highlighted ways we can help our users make their wikis more accessible. A key talking point from the Stars too was raising wider awareness of accessibility. Why should you make your wiki accessible? Ensuring users understand this will help with the why and how of what they’re doing is making a difference. This allows a user who wants to implement a feature or practice to consider accessibility early on in the process, which saves a lot of time over changing something afterwards. These resources and areas for respectful conversations are designed to celebrate accessible best practice, and support each other in implementing it.
Accessibility and Help pages
A key foundation is having easy-access resources for accessibility to help users get started. Fandom has some great, targeted accessibility resources already, with Help pages on color contrast and accounting for those who are color blind for example. We need to go further though, and today I’m happy to say we’ve launched a new accessibility help page! This is designed to be a more general entry point for users who want to know more about:
- What accessibility is
- Why accessibility is important
- Five things you can start with to improve accessibility of their wikis
- Further resources where you can find out more, and give feedback
For more in depth coverage of accessibility on specific aspects of the platform, the aim is to add an “Accessibility considerations” section to individual Help pages over time (kudos to the Stars for this suggestion!). This allows for bespoke accessibility advice for that feature, with examples and instructions as appropriate. We’ve already added a few of these sections, linked to from the new help page!
Read the new accessibility help page.
Fandom Discord
The Fandom Discord server offers a way for users to support each other in a variety of channels relating to different areas of the platform. We wanted to ensure coverage of accessibility in this server, through:
- #accessibility channel - this serves as a way for users to discuss and ask questions about accessibility, to help them improve best practices on their wikis. You don't need to know anything about accessibility to take part in the conversation, and you can ask any questions without judgement. Folks are there to help!
- Accessibility office hours - Based on user demand, we're going to trial accessibility office hours! This is dedicated time for users to chat to staff about accessibility and raise any feedback. We're going to start on 23 April at 8am PST/11am EST/4pm BST to discuss the Statement and new Help page. All being well, we’ll continue once a month after that. Keep an eye out for the event in Fandom Discord, and hopefully see you there!
That's about it from me! We'll continue improving, advocating and raising awareness for accessibility. A more accessible site benefits everyone! If you have any questions, please do join us in Fandom Discord, reach out in Community Central Discussions, or sound off in the comments below. Thanks everyone!
Click here to follow the Fandom staff blog.
Click here to sign up for the From the Desk of Community email newsletter.
Join our Official Discord server for registered editors!