Many websites are overly complicated, and most people find the web difficult to use, at least sometimes. Start there, and your job of making sure the site is accessible will be much easier. So does writing standards-compliant and clean HTML. The first thing I said during my talk, and I also repeated it several times because it’s important, is this: good design and a good user experience go a very long way toward making a site more accessible. The First Step to Accessibility: Good Design This is done primarily through the way we design content and the user interface, so in the context of HTML5, we won’t be discussing their needs. Websites also need to be accessible for users with cognitive disabilities (such as dyslexia). A mobility impairment might mean that the user is unable to use a traditional keyboard and/or mouse, and instead uses assistive software that allows her to navigate the web using voice commands. Users with mobility impairments also use assistive technology. People who are blind use assistive technology such as screen reader software (which reads the contents of the page out loud), and less frequently a braille display that converts text on the screen to braille.įor those who are hearing impaired, most of the web is accessible, except for video and audio content, so for those we need to provide a text alternative, such as captioning or a transcription.
This includes on mobile devices as well as regular desktop computers. Many but not all users with disabilities use assistive devices or software to browse the web. What Is AccessibilityĪccessibility for the web means making sure that our web pages and applications are available to everyone, including people with disabilities. For some of you it’s a legal obligation, but for everyone else it’s just the right thing to do. You should try to make your websites as accessible as possible. This is a summary of my session on HTML5 accessibility at Accessibility Camp Toronto (I didn’t use slides for my talk, so you’re getting this instead).Īccessibility is not a niche area of web design: everybody who works on the web needs to be interested in accessibility.
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