Yesterday, I met with Taylor Jadin of Reclaim Hosting, and we started to map out a new project. We are going to run an open series of meetings exploring TimelineJS, a wonderful web tool that was created by NorthWestern University’s Knight Lab.

Those that work in the Digital Humanities Space probably recognize both TimelineJS and the Storymaps project. These longstanding internet projects were created as easy ways for journalists and students to create interactives on websites. Using tools like Google Sheets and the TimelineJS code, students could create a professional looking interactive without doing any web coding. Faculty that wanted students to create digital artifacts found it to be fairly intuitive for students.

However, with an increased focus on Accessibility in Higher Education, some technologists and educators from the Reclaim Hosting community wondered if using TimelineJS was still possible and prudent, due to new enforcement of the American’s with Disabilities Act or Title 2. We decided to put together a group of a colleagues who would explore TimelineJS’s accessibility, document what we find, and possibly propose solutions back upstream to the Knight Lab.

• Phase 1: Do an accessibility review of TimelineJS, using a series of automated, guided, and manual testing procedures. Document issues found, and discuss the role of accessibility testing.
• Phase 2: Using the results of phase 1, explore if we can help suggest code changes that would close accessibility gaps. We would work on our own fork of KnightLab’s open source project, and submit pull requests upstream.
• Phase 3: Because so many of us use WordPress, we want to explore what it would take to create a plugin/custom block that would utilize TimelineJS.

We were intentional as we built out these phases, that each phase would have value, even if we stopped there. If all we do is meet as a group of technologists and learn from each other about how we are doing accessibility testing, I think that has real value. If we are able to contribute back upstream, wonderful. If we can build something new, perhaps trying to vibe code a little, then that could be fun.

Each of us also brings different goals to the project. I find that I learn the most about accessibility with real examples, closing real gaps, and solving problems. Having a specific project will likely make me investigate more ARIA roles, keyboard navigation, and sliders; some of the deeper topics in accessibility. Other people might want to learn more about Github and open source collaboration and what that can look like. Others might just be at the beginning of their accessibility journey and looking for accessibility checkers, tools, and workflows.

I hope we can build a little community where we learn something new!