Website Accessibility

Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can:

• Perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web
• Contribute to the Web

Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including:

• Auditory
• Cognitive
• Neurological
• Physical
• Speech
• Visual

Web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities, for example:

• People using mobile phones, smart watches, smart TVs, and other devices with small screens, different input modes, etc.
• Older people with changing abilities due to ageing
• People with “temporary disabilities” such as a broken arm or lost glasses
• People with “situational limitations” such as in bright sunlight or in an environment where they cannot listen to audio
• People using a slow Internet connection, or who have limited internet access

The Web has become an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation, and more. It is essential that the Web is accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with diverse abilities. Access to information and communications technologies, including the Web, is defined as a basic human right in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).

Not only will making your website accessible make the experience for the user a lot more enjoyable, especially in a variety of situations, across different devices, and for older users. Accessibility can enhance your brand, drive innovation, and extend your market reach.

When developing or reconstructing a website, it is important to evaluate accessibility at the early stages of development and throughout the development process to identify accessibility problems early on in the process, as it is easier to address the issues then. 

5 Ways To Make A Website Accessible

Choose your colors carefully: When deciding what the main colors on your website will be, you must think about how these colors will work for a variety of different people, including those who are color blind. You must ensure the colors you select on your site contrast well so that everyone can distinguish between various elements on the page. The most important issue is making sure your text stands out against the background. Ideally, you should set a dark color against a light one, making sure that they don’t bleed into each other.

As you can see from the example above, it is extremely difficult to read the text as the two colors chosen are too similar. 

In the example above, the text is a lot easier to read as the light background works well with the dark text. 

Use headers to structure the content correctly: By doing this your content will be a lot easier to understand and as a result of this will improve flow. As well as making the page easier to understand, clear headers also help screen readers interpret your pages. It is a very simple process to complete as you just need to ensure you use the correct heading levels in your content. For example, you should only use one H1 per page, which would usually be for the page title. This can be followed by subheadings starting with H2, H3, H4 and so on. These should always be used in order.

Add an Alt Tag to every image: It is important to add Alt Tags for screen readers. An alt tag allows you to describe the photo for those who have difficulty viewing it. The text will act as a replacement of the image if it fails to load.

Make your website keyboard friendly: for a website to be accessible, it must work without the use of a mouse. The reason behind this is because many devices rely on keyboard-only navigation. When designing your website to be used with a keyboard and nothing else, you must ensure that this will allow the user to access all pages, content, links, and so on only using a keyboard. The most common way of navigating using a keyboard is with the tab key. This will jump between areas on a page that can have keyboard focus which includes links, buttons, and forms. Therefore, your goal should be to ensure that all web content and navigation can be accessed using the tab button.

Enable re-sizable text that won't break your website: Generally all devices these days will allow a user to resize the text on a website, this can be a great help to those who are visually impaired. However, if you don’t build a feature on your website to support re-sizable text, resizing the text could change the whole design of the site and the layout could be very difficult for users to understand. You should also never turn off user-scalability as this will make it difficult for users to resize the text at all. The image above is a perfect example of a website that did not build a feature in allowing the user to resize the text, resulting in the design of the site breaking down and becoming difficult to understand.

Accessibility, in a nutshell, is usability for all. It ensures that everyone has equal access to your website, no matter what limitations or disabilities they have. Accessible websites have all elements from the text to the visuals and audio components available for people with disabilities.