In her Accessibility as a Journey: Rationales and Practical Tips for Making Sites Accessible presentation at WordCamp US 2021, Bet Hannon shared her journey and insights in creating accessible websites.
Hannon explained how her agency’s journey started with one client that was concerned about the accessibility of their site. And how that spurred their agency to learn more about accessibility to support the client.
Here are my notes.
Accessibility as a Journey: Rationales and Practical Tips for Making Sites Accessible
- Web accessibility provides equal access to people with diverse abilities, creating equal opportunity to access web content
- When you create accessible websites, your content is usable and available to everyone
- According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control estimates, one in four adults in the United States has a permanent or temporary disability
- Two popular screen readers blind people use to access content on the web: NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) and JAWS (Job Access with Speech) screen readers
- Other assistive devices include sensor, sip and puff devices, eye tracking devices; most are based on keyboard input.
- Check how your website supports keyboard input. Put away your mouse and use your keyboard to navigate your website using the tab, enter, and arrow keys.
- Semantic markup and alternative text for images are crucial in creating an accessible website. Make sure you’re using headings correctly. Add alternative text to all your images.
- Use headings properly on your site, don’t skip headings (from h1 to h3)
- Other ways to improve accessibility on your site: improve color contrast, add captions and transcripts to videos and podcasts
- Interested in the requirements for web accessibility? Start with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative. (Personal note: check out their Accessibility Fundamentals page)
- Avoiding legal issues is a top reason organizations take steps to improve their website accessibility
- Don’t use accessibility overlays, which apply third-party JavaScript to your front-end code, to make your site accessible. Learn more about accessibility overlays.
- While there are many reasons (legal, increased profits) to make your site accessible, ultimately it’s the moral and right thing to do
- People with disabilities have money to spend on your products and services. Why would you prevent 25% of your audience from accessing your website? Create an accessible site and you’ll increase your customers.
- Like curb cuts in sidewalks to the street benefit wheelchair users, bicyclists, and people using strollers or rollable luggage, creating an accessible website benefits everyone
- Keeping current customers is less expensive than getting new customers. Making investments in accessibility will help retain customers.
- Making an accessible website broadcasts to the world your organization’s values about inclusiveness
- Show your commitment by adding an accessibility statement to your site. Include: Statement about your organization and accessibility, Commitment to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Comment that accessibility is ongoing work
- Accessibility isn’t something you check at the end of your web design process. Build it in from the beginning of your project.
