Technology Essentials in Education Episode 36:
Beyond the Checklist: Transforming Digital Accessibility in Education

Hello there, and welcome to today's episode of Technology Essentials in Education. My name is Dr. Monica Burns, and I'm very happy that you're here to jump into a conversation about accessibility, a very important topic in education.

I'm joined today by Alper Dönmez from the Jotform Teams. Alper is the VP of Quality Assurance for Jotform, which includes assurance strategy across all of their products, including manual testing, automation, and their dedicated accessibility team. So he spent time diving deep into this topic.

We're going to unpack some of the things you can do with Jotform related to accessibility and just some best practices in general. So whether you're creating permission slips, feedback forms, registration forms for your school community, or just curious about what accessibility looks like in digital spaces, this is the perfect conversation.

Let's go ahead and dive in. This episode is brought to you by Jotform. Jotform provides an all-in-one solution to streamline administrative tasks, enhance community engagement, and foster innovation.

Using their no-code drag-and-drop Jotform and workflows, your teams can securely collect and store data, automate tasks, and collaborate on team resources. Educational institutions are also eligible for a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise.

Head to their website to learn more: Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.

Welcome to the podcast. I am very excited to chat with you today about how Jotform is making forms accessible for everyone.

Before we get into all of that, can you share a bit with listeners? What is your role at Jotform? What does your day-to-day look like?

Great. First of all, thanks for this opportunity. I'm always happy to talk about accessibility. My name is Alper Dönmez. I am the vice president of quality assurance at Jotform.

My role is mainly responsible for product quality. We look to see if our products are usable, reliable, accessible, and have high quality before they go live to our users.

My team and I lead quality strategies across all of our products, including implementing new testing methodologies, automation strategies, and improving manual testing to ensure our release quality continues to improve as the product grows.

On a day-to-day basis, I have meetings with QA teams, including manual testing, automation, and accessibility teams. I work closely with them and also meet with developers, product managers, designers, or other stakeholders.

A big part of my work is managing bigger quality risks by foreseeing and identifying them before they happen. We prioritize big problems affecting customers and ensure the right teams are aligned with solutions.

So actually, this is my day-to-day tasks. A lot of conversations, check-ins, and people sharing their perspectives. Accessibility is such an important topic that doesn't always get the attention it deserves when it comes to digital tools.

What does accessibility mean to the team at Jotform? Why has it been a priority?

Accessibility is a relatively new topic for me, as I've worked in quality for about 15 years, but my accessibility journey started about four years ago when I joined Jotform. I'm always happy to learn about and talk about accessibility.

For us, accessibility means making sure everyone can use the digital products we build, regardless of their abilities or the technology they use. Jotform is used by schools, universities, non-profits, healthcare organizations, and other businesses.

These organizations collect critical information through our forms, like registrations, applications, and feedback. If there are accessibility problems, it can create real barriers for someone, which we want to avoid.

Accessibility is not only a technical requirement but also about inclusion and equal access. With increasing regulations and expectations worldwide, it has become an even bigger priority for us.

Many of our customers serve education, healthcare, and government sectors and need to meet standards like WCAG and other accessibility regulations. Our responsibility is to help users create digital forms that are more accessible, not just to provide a form builder.

All the industries we support have many different stakeholders from whom they collect information, and they need to be able to get that information effectively. Accessibility expectations have evolved, making this a priority for us.

Can you walk listeners through what Jotform has built to help create accessible forms? What does that experience look like for someone building a form?

Our main goal is to make the form-building process simple while guiding users toward better accessibility. When someone creates a form, they use fields like name, email, address, dropdowns, file uploads, and many others.

Behind the scenes, we ensure all these fields support accessibility best practices, such as proper labels, keyboard navigation, and logical form structure. Proper labeling is very important.

Another important improvement is color contrast. Jotform is very focused on color themes and the visual side, so we have developed new form color contrast themes that stay within contrast ratios.

We don't expect our users to calculate contrast ratios themselves; we help them create forms that are visually appealing and easier to read and understand.

Finally, we provide an accessibility checker that helps form creators identify accessibility issues while building their forms and offers guidance directly inside the product.

The goal is to make accessibility easier and more practical for everyday users because we can't expect all users to know all the technical guidelines and rules.

Those are our aims.

That's such a good point because, as a generalist, I'm not an accessibility expert. I know some things about color contrast or alt text, but it's not my area of expertise.

I've played around with the accessibility checker, and it's really powerful. It opens up someone's eyes to what it means for a form to be accessible, doing the heavy lifting for those who don't need to become experts.

Can you share a couple of things the checker catches that someone might not expect?

Sure. Before our new accessibility checker, we had another tool, but now we're using new technologies and libraries widely used around the world.

The accessibility checker scans forms and identifies issues affecting accessibility, such as labeling problems, missing or unclear labels, missing alternative text for images, and color contrast issues.

It also detects incorrect heading structures, problems between buttons or links, required fields not clearly communicated, and issues affecting keyboard navigation.

What I like about this approach is that common issues are flagged while building the form, because fixing them after sharing is very difficult.

The checker makes accessibility practical, which is our aim, since we can't expect all customers to understand every accessibility rule or guideline.

Instead of asking every form builder to understand each rule, we provide this tool so they can check their forms and see common issues.

Of course, this tool cannot catch every issue. Accessibility also needs manual testing, real user feedback, and testing with assistive technologies, which we do internally and with an accessibility vendor.

This checker is a very useful first layer that helps creators catch many common issues before sharing forms.

It empowers someone who knows accessibility is important but may hesitate to create something because they need to meet guidelines. Now they have built-in support.

As I used it, I found things I wouldn't have thought of before, building capacity for people who may not have the vocabulary or understand the nuances of accessibility.

You mentioned assistive technologies. How does Jotform support users who rely on screen readers or alternative input devices?

We care a lot about form fields and labeling because labels need to be clear and properly connected to related fields to help users understand what information is expected.

We provide 100% support for customers to give any labeling system, but sometimes users change labels and create problems. Labeling is very important.

Keyboard accessibility is also important because not everyone uses a mouse; some use keyboards. We do internal testing to ensure users can navigate forms with keyboards and arrows.

Another important area is error handling. If a required field is missed or an incorrect value entered, our error mechanism links directly to the problematic field, which is very important.

We recently improved the signature field, which is mostly used by our customers. Previously, it only had a drag option, but not everyone can use a mouse, so we enabled a type option to sign forms by typing names or initials.

Overall, our focus is making form building easier for customers and easier to complete for people using different assistive technologies like keyboards or screen readers.

A quick note from the presenter: Jotform lets you build a form in minutes, including student surveys, homework submissions, online quizzes, and more. You can start from scratch or use free templates designed for teachers, schools, and districts.

Learn more about Jotform and how educational institutions can get a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise by visiting Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.

It's interesting to think about both roles: the person creating a form with support from the accessibility checker, and the person filling out the form who may need assistive technology support.

There may be 5, 10, or 100 people in a school or district community who really need that extra support.

For a school or district thinking about accessibility across all digital communications, not just forms, what mindset shift would you encourage?

It's very important. In education, every digital communication matters, like forms, PDFs, announcements, permissions, or feedback. These are main ways students or parents interact with schools.

The biggest mindset shift should be to stop thinking of accessibility as a final checklist and start it at the beginning of the process. Accessibility should be the beginning, not something fixed later.

I would encourage schools and districts to see accessibility as a benefit to everyone, not only people with disabilities. Clear language, good structure, readable design, and labeling help everyone, including parents less comfortable with technology or mobile users.

Accessibility is not only compliance but a better way of communication. Schools need to start with accessibility in mind before sending materials to teachers, parents, or students.

Leading with that mindset makes accessibility part of the creation process. Compliance is important, but so is making things easy to read, consume, and fill out regardless of device.

Supporting diverse people in school and district communities by leading with accessibility in all digital communications, including forms, is essential.

You mentioned assistive technology components and work happening with other devices. What's next for Jotform in accessibility? Are there new features or improvements on the horizon?

Yes. Accessibility is an ongoing journey for us. As Jotform grows, we need to check accessibility continuously.

Our main goal now is to make the form-building process more accessible. Since Jotform has more products like Jotform Sign, Jotform Apps, AI, and Smart PDF, we will increase accessibility levels for those products too.

We will implement the accessibility checker for other builder products, like app builders, so users can see possible issues while creating other products.

We are also working on our VPAT repository. Currently, we only have VPAT for the form site, but soon we will have VPATs for other products to help customers see our transparency and documentation.

We will renew our VPATs yearly, working with an external vendor. We have extended our contract for audits, remediation, and validation to systematically identify issues and learn from them.

We have built an internal accessibility team that tests products and features internally. We are increasing automated accessibility checks and making accessibility a constant across different Jotform products.

Currently, we follow WCAG 2.1, but we may need to deliver WCAG 2.2 compliance as regulations evolve.

There are many pieces involved, including compliance and streamlining the user experience. Users who have had success with the accessibility checker in one area will want it in others.

We've talked about mindset shifts and things educators can try today with Jotform's accessibility checker.

For an educator who wants to make their forms more accessible starting today, what's the first thing you'd recommend?

I recommend starting by reviewing the form from the form filler’s perspective. Ask yourself: Are the questions clear? Are the labels understandable? Can someone fill this form without confusion? Is the form easy to follow?

After asking these questions, start using our accessibility checker to see if there are any other issues on the form.

I also recommend keeping the form simple by avoiding unnecessary fields, using clear section titles, and not relying on color alone.

Visual forms are great, but you need to consider contrast issues and make sure required fields are clearly defined and explained.

When testing new features or fields, we try to fill the form using only the keyboard to ensure accessibility, because if you can't navigate with a keyboard, others will have problems too.

These are some recommendations I can give right now.

Being super clear, knowing your intention, and reviewing with your audience in mind are important. The keyboard testing is a great extra step.

If you can navigate through the form with a keyboard and have clear sections, you are in a great place to try the accessibility checker and send the form out.

This has been a fantastic conversation on accessibility, form creation considerations, and what Jotform is doing in this space.

Where can people connect with you or learn more about your work?

My name is Alper Dönmez, and people can connect with me through LinkedIn. I'm always happy to meet people interested in quality and accessibility.

For other accessibility-related questions or information, they can email accessibility at Jotform.com. Our team responds and loves to help audiences, customers, or users with accessibility questions.

Thank you so much for your time and for sharing these great strategies and actionable information with listeners today. This was a great conversation.

This has been a conversation with Alper Dönmez from Jotform. Let's finish with a few key points from today's episode.

First, stop thinking of accessibility as a final checklist and start making it the beginning of your creation process.

Use Jotform's built-in accessibility checker to catch common issues like missing labels, color contrast problems, and structure errors when you build.

Keep forms simple by using clear labels, section titles, and only the fields you really need.

Remember that accessibility benefits everyone, including families comfortable with technology, mobile users, and people working in a second language.

There are many ways to connect with the Jotform Teams to learn more about accessibility. If you are looking for their resources, head over to their accessibility landing page.

A big thank you to Jotform, the presenter of today's episode. To learn more about Jotform and how educational institutions can get a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise, visit Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.