I try to open my mind and reflect on some possibilities that would maybe, perhaps, make accessibility overlays viable solutions. Then I quickly find the downsides and don’t change my mind about them…
Tag: SEO
Latest posts:
Please forget about automatic document outline and plan accordingly. Make it work for people and not for search engines. It’s once again a team effort – design, develop and content.
Attended web performance conference (performance.now()) and found some thoughts about similarities with accessibility. Also made a simple proof of concept for a time to interactive metrics for screen-readers and other assistive technologies.
Just a brief reflection on the business side of the accessibility equation that can easily be set on side.
European Accessibility Act will for sure have huge positive effects on the e-commerce, and I hope it will help also other sectors and small-businesses.
This post is not your daily rant about not including accessibility into different online competitions – it is about why it really should be like that – we all deserve accessibility and there are no reasons why competitions should not add accessibility as one of key factors. It is beneficial for all!
If you own an online shop I really suggest that you make it as accessible as possible. European Accessibility Act will require it from you, but let’s rather think about getting more customers, non-discrimination of people with disabilities and better search engine optimization as the main drivers for making eCommerce accessible.
Everybody seems to publish videos online and that is not so strange with modern mobile phones all around us. But to make a video accessible we need to invest some time and effort, otherwise we risk that some people will never get to our messages in the video. I try to summarize the basics and also provide some resources that can go beyond.
I try to summarize on the hard parts of accessibility as I detect them. Some parts of digital production are actually simpler to make accessible and some are not, so reflections on that may help you to invest resources correctly.
The more I know about alternative text for images the more I understand the complexity of it. There are differences between users and content creators about decorative and informative image objectives and developers should never decide if image will be decorative or not. HTML standard includes a lot on this as well and should be read by more people for better accessibility and better web in general.
axe-hackathon video is now live and I decided to transcribe my presentation’s questions and answers regarding aXeSiA and publish the feedback I got from the committee as well.
aXeSiA – my open source contribution to accessibility testing and axe-hackathon. We all like to use browser extensions to test the pages but aXeSiA makes our work easier if we want to automate it.
We remember the rule for alternative text on decorative images, right. But is it really so clear what an decorative image is. Sometimes SEO wants us to have alternative text for images that do not directly add to the information. Should we do it for the bots or should we save time for screen-reader users? It depends. As always…
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.
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!
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 have done some quick practical testing and research about cookie consents accessibility, usability and also some testing with search engines – on some websites in Europe, to see what are consequences of cookie consents for users, owners and search engines.
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.
Search engines are actually screen readers if we simplify them so accessibility is extremely important for search engine optimization as well.
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.