I read a lot on best practices around implementing accessibility into a tech company – and this post is a simple guideline of mine. It is the first part and I will add my findings and lessons learned when I test the process in real life.
Category: Principles
Latest posts:
After some practical accessibility statement preparation work I decided to describe some thoughts of mine on the best practices that can be useful for it.
Some thoughts and investigations of mine on compliance and what does it really mean to be compliant. This seems like a simple declaration but is it really so simple?
A link should navigate and a button should do something is the basic idea. Semantics will be rewarded with usability and even search engines will like it, so why break the pattern.
It is possible that our website is 100% WCAG compliant and still not accessible to an assistive technology user. WCAG alone is not enough, we must test manually as well.
New CSS media query that can enable more control for high contrast mode and what high contrast mode actually is and how it is not only a dark mode
Before we start with a review we should have a plan. We should think of providing real value, not just covering compliance. We should define real goals and lead to real results and improvements.
Just some thoughts of mine on presenting the case for accessibility to stakeholders
On the long term whole organization should be aware of the win-win potentials when accessibility is baked into organizational culture.
Personal thoughts after my first real session with stakeholders where I reflect on the business side a bit
Why are we not encouraged to use ARIA everywhere? Because it is a last option – if we are not able to find a native semantic element, or if we want to create something special, then we can use ARIA. But it should be used wisely!
Inspired by a YouTube video from Una Kravets and always knowing that aria reminded me of something I had to elaborate on that (and explain a small bit on dangers of aria as well)
Some reflections on my newly acquired Web Accessibility Specialist certification and a mention of Neuralink that will be demoed today and can have positive implications on accessibility as well. If used correctly.
Exactly one month until all public sector websites in the European Union must be accessible. Or to be more realistic – until they will have to let the users know where they still need work on accessibility. A positive direction nonetheless.
There are still some myths out there about what we can and can not do and there are also some best practices around use of headings. Please do use them is my advice, but it is not a thing for compliance and SEO itself. It is more about usability.
I wanted to expose sweet points from the Making Facebook.com accessible to as many people as possible article that was published on 30th of July 2020 as it is an excellent example of continuous and from-start accessibility in my opinion and we should all implement at least some parts of it in our work-flows.
Do not think that alternative text is a set and forget thing. Picture can mean different things in different contexts, so the alternative text must respect that.
Design is art, I agree, but not every new page should be a independent piece of art, consistency is king. Easier to make accessible, easier for the user to use.
Starting soon lowers the costs on the end. And minimizes potentially unneeded dialogs that should already be a part of the design process from before.
A lot is written on Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration and I think they should also include accessibility. Maybe we should define Continuous Accessibility as a part of them as well.
It is interesting to compare accessibility errors from a million of popular websites and see if and how are they improving or deteriorating compared to previous year.
At first glance not very much, but when we research the details and difficulties of some user groups then it is not difficult to understand that content must be readable to be understood.
I use zoom as well, and it is a perfect example of accessibility feature that is beneficial for everyone, especially in this demographics with population getting older and older…
This API is just an interface that assistive technologies and user agents use to communicate. It is important to know that there are differences between vendor solutions so testing is a bit more complex but crucial.
They say that sometimes you can not see the forest for the trees. But in web development you really should think about the forest of multiple trees to understand how it connects.
Search engines are actually screen readers if we simplify them so accessibility is extremely important for search engine optimization as well.
Beside content accessibility guidelines we must also be aware of authoring tool accessibility guidelines that your editor tools, for example content management system, should adhere to
My reflections on the process. And yes – testing early is a requirement. Developers should also use screen-readers to test their components, templates etc.
Short reminder about what is semantics and some practical examples of it before we explain the importance of semantics for accessibility and search engine optimization.
When more and more services move online, then they must be accessible, otherwise they exclude.