Have you ever heard about accessibility? 3, 2, 1 …. Maybe you have heard the term accessibility before in a particular context, but have you thought about how accessibility fits within the open source development? In this talk, we will dive into the efforts to make Jupyterlab and Jupyter interfaces accessible to a broader audience of users, including those users requiring assistive technologies. We will discuss ongoing efforts around robust accessibility testing framework for projects in the Jupyter ecosystem, addressing critical accessibility issues in Jupyterlab and developing documentation focused on best practices for accessibility compliance and disability inclusion. And, more importantly, how you can participate in making open source more accessible to all, whatever your role is: user, contributor, maintainer, advocate or any other. At the end of the talk, the attendees will be able to: 1. Have a basic understanding of accessibility and how it ties to open source software such as Jupyterlab. 2. Learn about current efforts to make Jupyterlab more accessible. 3. Get resources for learning more about accessibility and to engage with the accessibility efforts in the Jupyter ecosystem.

1. Stephannie Jimenez Gacha
Quansight Labs
Inclusive and accessible
scientific computing in the
Jupyter ecosystem

2. Table of contents
01 Web accessibility
02
Jupyter and
accessibility
03 Tips and tricks
04 Useful resources

3. Web accessibility
01

4. “The power of the Web is in its
universality. Access by everyone
regardless of disability is an essential
aspect.”
—Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director

5. Navigate
What is Web accessibility?
Interact Perceive
Understand Contribute

6. Perceivable
The four principles of accessibility
Operable
Understandable Robust

7. Web is essential for everyone!
Education, employment, government, commerce, recreation, …
Accessibility is important for communities
Less barriers to print, audio, and visual media are easily accessible
Access is a fundamental right
Older people, people in rural areas, people using different devices, …
Social inclusion

8. What about open source?
For every million users, we
are potentially excluding
~200 thousand users
20%
Disabled
population

9. Jupyter and
accessibility
02

10. Automated accessibility testing
Add a framework for automated testing of the JupyterLab UI
What are our main goals?
Support 200% zoom, improve color contrast, add keyboard navigability
WCAG 2.1 compliance
Perform accessibility events, sprints, documentation and community calls
Cross project outreach & community
engagement

11. Automated testing
● Developed GitHub actions to run
off-the-shelf accessibility checks
● Add custom regression tests
Keyboard navigability
● Elimination of Tab traps in most of the main
areas of JupyterLab
● Organised and led a keyboard navigation
audit
Accessibility related improvements

12. 200% zoom
● Audit for the complete JupyterLab UI
● Main menu bar is more accessible after
adding a collapsible menu
Color contrast
● Developed accessible-pygments package
with 16 WCAG 2.1 compliant themes.
● Theme extension in progress with a set of
accessible themes.
Accessibility related improvements

13. Cross project outreach and community
engagement
● Bi-weekly Jupyter Accessibility call
● Alt text workshops and jams
● Group audits for keyboard navigation and
Jupyter Book UI
● Collaboration with the Space Telescope
Science Institute (STScl)
● Accessibility-focused documentation
● Quansight Labs sponsored a 3 month
internship project to work fixing zoom issues
Accessibility related improvements

14. How to improve
accessibility in your
project?
03

15. Accessibility is continuous!
Test the current
status of your
interface
Define the
accessibility objectives
of your project
Start implementing
solutions
Test and document
the features that are
new or changed
1st 2nd
4th 3rd

16. Useful resources
04

17. - CZI Jupyter Accessibility grant proposal
- WCAG 2.1 guidelines
- WAI-ARIA guidelines
- Tetralogical blog
- Myth: Accessibility is blind people
- Jupyter Accessibility Community workshops
- Jupyter Accessibility resources
- Jupyter Accessibility meeting minutes
- JupyterLab Accessible Themes
- Jupyter Accessibility testing
- Accessible pygments
- User testing form
Resources

18. Are you interested
in accessibility?
● Online user testing events
● Notebook authoring sprint this saturday
● Come to our bi-weekly Jupyter
Accessibility meetings!

19. CREDITS: This presentation template was
created by Slidesgo, including icons by Flaticon,
infographics & images by Freepik
Thanks
Do you have any questions?
steff456
Stephannie Jimenez Gacha
@stephanniejime2
sgacha@quansight.com