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Enhancing Accessibility on the Information Transparency Platform

26 February 2024
By
Sally Newell Cohen

Sally Newell Cohen

SVP, Global Communications

Sally Newell Cohen is the Senior Vice President of Global Communications and Language Services at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition to leading a global communications team, she is the principal communications strategist and advisor to the CEO, Executive Team, and Board of Directors.

A proven leader in marketing and communications, Sally is known for building strong teams and executing strategies that elevate competitive advantage, promote growth, and enhance brand awareness. She leads the strategic communications effort to build greater awareness of ICANN’s global mission. 

Most recently, Sally was the Chief Operations Officer at Toastmasters International, where she partnered with the Board of Directors and CEO to develop a comprehensive strategic plan. Under her leadership, her team accomplished a global rebranding effort that revitalized the company’s image and increased membership. She also has significant public relations and operational experience, having held leadership roles at public relations firms as well as high-tech companies such as Ingram Micro.

Sally has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Keene State College and has completed Executive Education programs at Harvard and Stanford. Before entering business communications, Sally was a journalist, where her natural curiosity was put to use as a reporter and editor.

One of the nine goals at the heart of the Information Transparency Initiative (ITI) is to ensure that the multilingual content on icann.org is accessible to people with disabilities. Ensuring that we remove the barriers to engagement with the content on the Information Transparency Platform (ITP) is necessary to enable and encourage participation. 

As the team continues to progress with its work, we wanted to provide an update on our efforts to enhance accessibility on https://icann.org.

What is Accessibility and Why is it Important?

A website is considered accessible if it is designed so that people with disabilities can use it. This includes visual, auditory, physical, speech, and cognitive disabilities or neurological conditions.

ICANN has modeled its practices after the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 A/AA success criteria, which were developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). ICANN organization (org) retained TPGi – an external, third-party accessibility solutions provider to ensure the features on ITP follow these guidelines.

Where Are We Now?

TPGi provided a comprehensive accessibility audit report that reviewed 10 user journeys and 59 individual components for several ICANN website-related features and pages. We worked hand in hand to review accessibility standards in ICANN's content for the following features and pages that have been released:

  1. Acronyms and Terms
  2. Accredited Registrars
  3. Announcements
  4. Blogs
  5. ICANN Account
  6. ICANN Careers
  7. ICANN Homepage
  8. ICANN News Subscriptions
  9. Public Comment
  10. Registry Agreements

Identifying and validating conformance to WCAG 2.1 A/AA standards was performed through a combination of accessibility scan engines, manual accessibility tests, and inspecting the underlying HTML/CSS implementation. Assistive technologies were used to:

  • Test components with built-in browser magnification at 200%.
  • Test components to confirm they are keyboard operable.
  • Test common/key components using JAWS and NVDA on the PC desktop, and VoiceOver in Safari on the Mac desktop.
  • Test the common/key components using ZoomText with Chrome.

Findings and recommended changes from the accessibility audit report have been categorized and are being addressed based on priority, with the most critical areas largely addressed.

As new features and pages are developed and released, the team will ensure that in addition to best practices, accessibility will be built in.

For more information about the ITP, please visit https://www.icann.org/iti. If you have any ITP-related questions or comments, please contact the team at: informationtransparency@icann.org.

Authors

Sally Newell Cohen

Sally Newell Cohen

SVP, Global Communications
Sally Newell Cohen

Sally Newell Cohen

SVP, Global Communications

Sally Newell Cohen is the Senior Vice President of Global Communications and Language Services at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition to leading a global communications team, she is the principal communications strategist and advisor to the CEO, Executive Team, and Board of Directors.

A proven leader in marketing and communications, Sally is known for building strong teams and executing strategies that elevate competitive advantage, promote growth, and enhance brand awareness. She leads the strategic communications effort to build greater awareness of ICANN’s global mission. 

Most recently, Sally was the Chief Operations Officer at Toastmasters International, where she partnered with the Board of Directors and CEO to develop a comprehensive strategic plan. Under her leadership, her team accomplished a global rebranding effort that revitalized the company’s image and increased membership. She also has significant public relations and operational experience, having held leadership roles at public relations firms as well as high-tech companies such as Ingram Micro.

Sally has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Keene State College and has completed Executive Education programs at Harvard and Stanford. Before entering business communications, Sally was a journalist, where her natural curiosity was put to use as a reporter and editor.

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