Introduction to web accessibility
It is a legal requirement under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) to ensure that websites are accessible to blind and disabled users. If someone with a disability, such as sight loss, can’t access the information on your website then it could be seen as discrimination.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a series of guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the Internet. These feature four foundational principles for web accessibility ... POUR.
Four principles for web accessibility
- Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive
- Operable: Users must be able to operate the interface
- Understandable: Users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface
- Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents (web browsers), including assistive technologies
A service provider has to take reasonable steps to change a practice which makes it unreasonable or difficult for disabled people to make use of its services.
The guidelines
The guidelines are structured into three levels of conformance:
- Level A: Offering a basic level of accessibility features.
- Level AA. Addresses bigger and more common issues encountered by disabled users.
- Level AAA. The most complete level of web accessibility
We recognise that each of the major categories of disabilities (visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive) require certain types of modifications when designing web content.
Resources
Tools for accessibility checking:
- WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool): A suite of evaluation tools to help authors make their web content more accessible.
- AXE Accessibility Checker: A browser extension providing in-depth analysis of web page accessibility.
- Color Contrast Checker: This allows you to check the color contrast of your website to ensure readability.
- NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access): A screen reader for Windows that enables people with vision impairments to use computers.
- JAWS (Job Access With Speech): A popular screen reader for Windows providing speech and Braille output.
