In this tutorial, you'll learn about accessibility, what it is, why it's important, and how accessible sites benefit everyone.
What is accessibility?
First, the what.
As a subset of digital accessibility, web accessibility means building sites that all people, regardless of their abilities, can use.
In the most general straightforward sense, accessibility guarantees universal and equal access to content and services.
As you learn or practice accessibility, you'll encounter technical terms.
Let's clarify them.
A11Y is a numerical abbreviation of the word accessibility, where 11 represents the number of letters between A and Y.
WCAG or WCAG is short for web content accessibility guidelines, an international accessibility standard developed through the World Wide Web Consortium.
The foundational principles of WCAG or WCAG are dubbed "POUR", "P-O-U-R", "Perceivable", "Oprable", "Understandable" and "Robust".
Let's start with "Perceivable".
"Perceivable" means delivering the information so that anyone can understand it.
For example, provide text alternatives for audio-visual content like images or videos.
Secondly, "Oprable".
"Oprable" refers to enabling people to use the interface and interact with the site.
For example, support keyboard functionality instead of mouse-only interactions.
Thirdly, "Understandable" ensures people can comprehend the information and use interfaces.
Lastly, "Robust".
Robust means content remains accessible as technology advances and evolves.
For example, use correct markup to guarantee compatibility with current and future browsers and assistive technologies.
Next, let's talk about some misconceptions.
All this sounds reasonable enough.
Yet, businesses and web makers are reluctant, citing common misconceptions.
Some of the misconceptions might be that people say accessibility is hard.
Yes, so is coding, writing and even baking souffles.
Still, humanity has managed to accomplish these tasks for decades, even centuries.
Secondly, some people might say accessible websites are poorly designed.
This is simply not true.
An accessible website would be as beautiful as your skills and project requirements allow it to be.
Thirdly, some might state compliance is expensive.
Yes, that is sometimes true.
That's why one should create an inclusive experience from the get-go.
Treating it as an afterthought, something you could solve with an add-on just before launch, is always the less sensible costly approach.
Lastly, some would argue accessibility is a nice to have.
On the contrary, it's as instrumental to a site as the client's branding, the team's coding standards or your language's grammar rules.
You won't deliberately introduce bugs, so why would you make things inaccessible?
A better way to think about accessibility is as a code name for empathy.
That makes it much harder to ignore and intuitive to adopt.
More than the legal compliance, commercial liability and financial implications, it's about fundamental human rights.
In 2006, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities defined access to information and communications technologies as a basic human right.
According to the W3C's 2018 report, there were over 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide.
And WebAIM's latest report found that 95.9% of the top million home pages had accessibility issues.
96.4% of the errors detected fall into six categories, namely low contrast text, missing form input label, empty buttons, no alternative text for images, empty links and no document language.
These six issues have plagued the web for 25 years since WCAG 1.0 was released in 1999.
Next, why is accessibility important? Accessibility isn't only a legal requirement in many countries. It's good for business too.
People with disabilities have a massive spending power, yet the overwhelming majority of websites neglect to take them into account.
The following demonstrations help illustrate some difficulties many of them have to overcome.
In the first example, we will see how a non-visually impaired user would see the page in optimal conditions.
The design includes non-default styling, small fonts, links without underlines and insufficient color contrast.
Now, if this is not easy to navigate for a non-visually impaired person, how much more difficult will it be for someone who is visually impaired?
The next two examples emulate how users with vision deficiencies would see the page.
In the first example, we will see the impact of low contrast, small fonts and no underline on links.
In the second example, we will see that sometimes a screen might be a complete blur.
In the next example, I added an accordion to a post and then interacted with it using the mouse.
I then disabled JavaScript in the browser and tried to interact with it.
As the video demonstrates, it's impossible to use without JavaScript.
In the last example, I simulated a user navigating through the page with a keyboard, using the tab key to move forward and shift plus tab keys to move backward.
The links, the search form and the YouTube video are properly marked when focused, but they yes/no buttons or not.
When developers or designers alter the default styling of interactive elements, in this case the buttons, to hide the visual indication of the focused element, the user can't tell if they are active.
The takeaway is that accessible sites aren't a bonus. They are essential for so many of us.
The range of disabilities is as diverse as humanity, covering everything from physical to cognitive to mental.
Permanent blindness to age related vision impairment.
Temporary hearing loss to difficulty concentrating.
Broken wrist to epilepsy; dyslexia to ADHD.
Color blindness to multiple sclerosis.
And the list can go on.
That's a multitude of people who are unable to fill out forms, navigate through sites, recognize links in texts, discern images, consume podcasts and videos or add items to the cart.
In conclusion, accessibility, even on the web alone, is a broad multifaceted topic that's impossible to cover in a few minutes.
We encourage you to learn more. Read, experiment and advocate for change.
Since over a third of the web's most visited site use WordPress, our community is pivotal in making the web more accessible.
You don't need to be a certified accessibility expert. Anyone involved in online creation can make a difference.