4 principles to make your website accessible for people with disabilities (and not exclude anyone from your content)

A web page that’s not readible is no good.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

There are a lot of different people with a lot of different capabilities. The more your website is tuned to these different users, the more accessible it is. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3) created the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to give recommendations on how to achieve this. I think when we are talking about key characteristics of an accessible web page, this is as close as it gets.

The four principles of the WCAG provide us with the key characteristics of an accessible web page.

Principle 1: Perceivable

Present information and user interface components in ways that users can experience and use it.

Here are some examples:

• Provide text alternatives for non-text content.
• Provide a transcript for audio and video content.
• Provide video content with subtitles.
• Ensure that the content is logically structured.
• Use semantic (meaningful) code.
• Ensure that each function can be used when the standard text size is doubled.

It’s all about giving meaning to something that cannot be seen or heard.

Principle 2: Operable

Make sure that people can find and use content on the website regardless of how they use it.

• Make sure everything works with a keyboard.
• Show the keyboard focus.
• Use descriptive titles for pages and windows.
• Use descriptive links so that it is clear where they lead.
• Do not use flashing content.

Everything must be able to be controlled only by the keyboard and have clear descriptions.

Principle 3: Understandable

People and software can understand the content and how the website works.

• Allow software to determine the language of the page.
• Make the text legible and understandable.
• Make sure all form fields have visible and meaningful labels.
• Make it easy to spot erroneous form entries.

Help users and software understand the information and elements on the page.

Principle 4: Robust

Make sure that the content can be reliably interpreted by browsers and assistive technologies.

• Leverage error-free code.
• Ensure maximum compatibility with current and future browsers and other utilities.
• Make sure assistive technologies understand what each function is for and what state it is in.

To achieve these characteristics, web developers must adhere to guidelines such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provides a set of recommendations for making web content more accessible to people with disabilities. These guidelines cover a range of topics, from color contrast and text alternatives to keyboard accessibility and language clarity.