Importance of Disability-Accessible Websites
Written By Helena Xu, Content Writer at World of Devs
As the world consists of such a large variety of different people, it is a crucial part of society as a whole to strive towards being inclusive and accessible to every single individual. If an English speaking person is researching a topic that only has material in another language- say Urdu. Then this means that the topic is inaccessible to a certain cluster of English-speaking persons. This same principle can be applied to web development and the accessibility of a website. Just like how language is an aspect of web accessibility, another focus that is often disregarded or overlooked is the accessibility of websites to the disabled.
According to WHO, about 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability, based on 2010 global population estimates. Whether it be a permanent disability of blindness, to temporary disabilities such as impairments, we as web developers need to ensure that our websites and services are equal in opportunity and accessible for all people. In addition to the general inclusivity of disabled persons, accessibility in a website is valuable to web developers as this opens up a new market of people that will benefit from your products, content, or services. Depending on your country and online regulations, there are also cases in which it is considered a law to be accessible, and there are legal standards that need to be followed and met.
Now that we understand the importance, the big question is, how do we make accessible websites?
Let’s start with the basics, the first step that you should take is to add alt text to images. Although visuals are a great tool to use, to those with visual impairments the images and graphics that we add to our websites are not very useful and accessible to them. In order to overcome this, we need to add alt text. Alt text is an html attribute that is used to describe images, or you can use the “Longdesc Tag” for longer descriptions. By adding an image description you can effectively communicate the visual with words that braille readers or screen readers can then use for the visually impared. Make sure to write clear descriptions that don’t take away from the purpose, such as alt= “black cat playing with yarn”.
The next thing that you can do is to improve the overall user interface and display while keeping web accessibility in mind. This includes aspects such as paying attention to contrast and colors, using appropriate heading and organization, and changing font sizes. When you design your page in accordance to contrast and color sensitivity, this makes it more accessible for users that have visual impairments and even senior users that have developed eye conditions with age, such as glaucoma. It is important to make your text readable and to use different colors in your foreground and background such as the common black and white, or use complementary colors. Also, it is important to be mindful of your headings and how you organize your page, and to avoid non-accessible features such as a specific color representing a certain meaning if you have not clearly stated it somewhere on your website. Finally, by allowing users to change the font size and settings, this helps to make it more accessible for them to read the text without difficulty and without straining the eyes.
After that, the next step you can take is to make video and multimedia accessible. Whenever you want to present information in a video or multimedia form, you need to ensure that blind and visually impared users are able to engage with the video and multimedia through tools such as audio description. Not only is the dialogue in videos important, but audio description is important to describe visuals in videos such as the setting, images, gestures, and more. For the auditory impaired, deaf, or hard of hearing users, you can also implement synchronized captions, or even offer transcripts as well!
Another important aspect is keyboard navigation, which can greatly help a wide variety of people such as people with motor disabilities or people who have tremors. When you are unable to use a mouse to browse a website, you become dependent on other forms such as keyboard navigation. By implementing keyboard navigation you are also able to ensure that blind users can use braille keyboards and that they can also access the interactive parts of your website such as buttons, drop down menus, forms, and add ons.
Finally, the most important aspect that will help you to create disability accessible websites is the use of ARIA. ARIA, which stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications, is a specialized collection of html attributes to make websites more accessible. These attributes can be added to any markup, and uses the “role” attribute to define the role for a specific type of object, which in turn, provides more information about website elements to accessibility tools such as braille or screen readers. Examples of ARIA categories include widget, window, landmark, and document structure. You can also find many articles, tutorials, and websites catered to teach about ARIA and how to use it.
Overall, disability accessible websites break the barriers that your target market may face, and is also a responsibility that web developers need to work on and to provide. Whether you’re a beginner web developer still learning the basics, or you’re a professional web developer with many assignments, it is crucial to always ensure that you are building your website with the disabled, and website accessibility in mind!
