Esri Cartography and Visual Accessibility Presentation- May 2025

TomSmedley — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 14:11:26 GMT

In May of 2025 the Esri Airport Team invited their customers to a Teams meeting to hear from an Esri Professional Services consultant on the Cartography and UI/UX team. In the interest of broader sharing, we have repurposed the meeting into this one-hour video.

In this presentation you will hear an important introduction from Mark Ricketson from Massport. He speaks about the needs of better maps and information products for internal and external stakeholders. Mark will also discuss later in the presentation how these improved map products fit a role in the preparation of a StoryMap supporting Sustainability and Resilience across the organization and community.

Jakob will take us on a journey about visual accessibility. It’s more than meeting color blindness color ramps; it’s about communicating the information easily and rapidly. Jakob will talk about the “tools of the mapmaker trade” and viewers will see how these principles are informed by using published standards. Standards like Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) support this improved cartography journey. Jakob will show the body of work he conducted with Massport including base map upgrades, map layer reviews, and the above mentioned StoryMap. Finally, he will cover how this activity could be delivered to other airport customers and what the activity looks like, including the deliverables.

You might be asking “how does this apply to my content and GIS information products”. Focusing on the needs of your stakeholders- teammates, leadership, the public- will focus your map products (maps and apps) in a whole new light. Part of this discussion shows how the organization’s brand informs and supports these improved information products.

But it might also apply to your airport under new guidelines from the U.S. government. There is a new rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments. Readers of this post might reach out to their organization and inquire on the impact of this on all their web and mobile content. The new rule cites the use of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1, Level AA as the technical standard for state and local governments’ web content and mobile apps. Jakob talks about the use of this standard in better cartography products- so we learn not only about better visual accessibility, but meeting government requirements in the presentation. A full discussion on ADA and WCAG is not the purpose of the presentation but reach out to your Esri POC to learn more about work supporting accessibility.

Thanks for watching and we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

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Esri Cartography and Visual Accessibility Presentation- May 2025