Expedia Group is committed to providing customers with an accessible and easy-to-use experience for mobile and web applications.  Our goal is to make our website and services inclusive to the widest possible audience regardless of visual, auditory, or mobile ability. As we adopted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the Expedia Accessibility Team realized that many developers, designers, and testers were having difficulties putting the guidelines into a context specific to their roles and needs.

Expedia’s Accessibility Team created and published The Expedia Accessibility Guidelines (ExAG), which streamlines WCAG into terms and requirements that fit our company’s standards and expectations. They are written so that no matter someone’s role or accessibility knowledge, they can understand what is needed for our websites and mobile applications to be accessible.

ExAG is structured in sections based on specific topics such as color, controls, or forms. Each topic contains guidelines to consider when working on a specific element or concept. For example, if a designer is adding color to a design, they can go to the color section to understand their key areas of focus.

Each guideline begins by providing the rationale for why the guideline is important and what affect it will have on our users if we don’t meet it. We then provide clearly articulated requirements that someone can use to easily assess whether they are meeting the guideline. To reinforce learning and improve understanding, we also include rich examples of correct and incorrect implementations, tips on how to meet the requirements, and links to both internal and external tools and resources.

Over 100 Expedia Group employees use ExAG each month to learn more about how to make their content accessible. Employees now have a better understanding of accessibility and feel empowered to independently incorporate accessibility guidelines into their work. In this Medium post, we announced the external version of ExAG so that other companies can leverage our work.

Karli Yeoman, Accessibility Engineer