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What is Accessibility?
Making your website available to as many people as possible
- Blind
- Sight impaired (long sighted, short sighted, colour blind, cataracts, etc.)
- Deaf
- Motion impaired
- Mentally impaired
The solutions to these disabilities are not difficult, however they do require forethought. For example:
Disability | User Issue | Website Issue | Impact | Solution |
poor eyesight | The user can't read small text | Using fixed size fonts | User cannot make text larger in IE | Use relative size fonts |
blind | The user can't see new popup windows | Using popups | User cannot use the back button in their browser or know they are in a popup | Don't use popups (unless as a last resort) |
There are many more examples.
Basic Tips
- Give your images meaningful ALT text (No ALT text and the URL is read out)
- If the image adds to the content, describe it properly
- If the image is just to be pretty, have
alt=""
. (Screen readers will ignore the image)
- Use skip links (Skip to Content, Skip to Navigation, etc.)
- Hide them with CSS and your regular users will never know
- Don't rely on Javascript
- Have a decent amount of contrast in your styles
- Have code flow logically from top to bottom
- Header
- Navigation
- Content
- Footer
- Use HTML headings. One H1 per page then logical H2 through to H6. Don't use headings for things that aren't headings.
- Use UL's and OL's for lists (including navigation)
- Validate your code
- Hyperlinks should have full context. "Here are some photos of my trip to Bucklame" vs. "Here are some photos of my trip to Bucklame"
- Screen readers are able to grab just the links from a page
- Ensure that all functionality is accessible via the keyboard
WCAG 2.0 Cheat Sheet
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) is a document that discusses how to make online content accessible to people with disabilities and non-disabled users. Here is a cheat sheet containing the most important techniques included in WCAG 2.0.
Principle 1: Perceivable
- Non-text content should have text equivalents
- Images should have text descriptions
- Videos should have captions
- Audio should have text transcripts
- Use appropriate semantic elements and ensure that structural relationships presented visually are available through the markup
- Headings should use HTML headings
- Lists should use HTML lists
- Ensure that the reading sequence presented visually is available through the markup
- Avoid relying on sensory characteristics such as shape or visual location when providing instructions
- Colour contrast ratios should be sufficient to support easy reading
- Avoid using colour as the sole means of conveying information
- Provide a means to play/pause/stop audio in a page
- Ensure that the page remains usable when text is resized to 200%
Principle 2: Operable
- All functionality should be available via the keyboard
- During sessions where there is a time limit, provide a means to extend the time
- Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures (content that flashes more than three times per second)
- Provide a means to bypass repetitive blocks of content
- Page titles should describe the page's content or purpose, and should preferably be unique
- Keyboard users should be able to navigate the page sequentially and the page should retain its meaning
- Link text should describe the link's purpose
- Headings and labels should describe their topic and purpose
- Keyboard focus should always be visibly indicated
Principle 3: Understandable
- Define the language of the page
- If parts of a page are in a different language, that language is identified
- Try to make text easy to read and understand
- Ensure that when a page element receives or loses focus, it does not change the context of the page, such as loading a new page
- Ensure that when an interactive element receives input, it does not change the context of the page unless the user has been warned
- Ensure that navigational structures repeated on multiple pages occur in the same order on the page each time they appear
- Ensure that elements with the same functionality are consistently identified
- Enable users to easily determine errors they have made
- Provide clear labels and instructions wherever user input is required
- If there is an error in user input, provide suggestions on how to correct it
- For legal or financial forms that modify user data in a database, allow the user to reverse any changes or to correct any errors prior to submission
Principle 4: Robust
- Ensure that HTML markup is used according to specification
- Ensure that for all custom-built components, the components' state, properties and values are provided in the markup
Initiatives
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): http://www.w3.org/WAI/
Tools
Automated tools are not a sufficient test of accessibility, however they are a starting point. The best testing is with real users.
- Colour Contrast Analyser (CCA)
- Download: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1570 (Windows Only)
- Job Access With Speech (JAWS)
- Download: http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jaws.asp (Windows Only)
- FANGS - Screen Reader Emulator Plugin for Firefox
- W3C Validator: http://validator.w3.org/