I was reading something on web security and stumbled upon security.txt – A proposed standard which allows websites to define security policies (opens in new window). After reading a lot about robots.txt a decade or so ago and about humans.txt some years ago I kind of understood the point behind having a security.txt file.
Reading more about the proposed standard made me think – hey, what a nice idea for accessibility as well. Therefore I made a simple accessibility.txt file and thought about what would be nice to put into it.
My immediate suggestion is:
- Contact data (like email).
- When does the file automatically expires (if somebody opens the file after this date they will know that it is old info without doubt).
- Preferred languages that people can use.
- Where can they find my accessibility statement.
- What level of WCAG conformance do I claim.
- When was the last update to the file (ideally also accessibility statement).
Check my accessibility.txt for this blog.
I guess this can be a bit more transparent than searching for accessibility statements that are sometimes not quite obvious. I know that I found them in policies, about us and even privacy, so having an obvious https://example.com/accessibility.txt should be more transparent and also robot parse-able at the same time.
Well, I am not expecting that everybody will use it, but it would maybe be nice if it would be used. I also guess that humans.txt and security.txt are not very popular beyond technically inspired people. And robots.txt are probably very popular because of search engine optimization and being there almost automatically.
What are your thoughts? I’m especially interested in getting feedback about more info that should potentially be added to the accessibility.txt file. And if it would maybe be better to use a11y.txt instead (kind of simpler, perhaps, but less known, I guess).
