What is accessibility?
Accessibility means all resources and services are available and usable by all people.
Web accessibility means that websites, applications, tools, and technologies are designed and developed in a way that they are accessible and usable by all different kinds of users, irrespective of their disabilities.
More specifically, people can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web as well as contribute to the Web.
- Visual
- Speech
- Hearing
- Motor
- Congnitive
- Neurological
Some of the examples include:
- Technical issues - like slower internet connection
- User could be accessing the content on smaller devices (mobiles, tablets, etc.), or older machines, or older browsers
- External environment - user is trying to listen to any video in a noisy environment. In this situation they won't be able to hear properly and having captions for videos will help a lot.
- Progressive - there are some abilities which decrease with aging, like sight or hearing abilities, motor abilities. I might be able to see properly today, but over time my eye sight can decrease and I might need to use screen magnifiers or screen readers to be able to underatnd and operate on the webistes and applications.
Resources:
- W3 accessibility documentation
- WAI-ARIA Authoring practices
- Microsoft Inclusive Design
- Google Developers group accessibility fundamentals
- WebAIM checklist for web accessibility
- Stark library collections
- Inclusive Components book by Heydon Pickering
- Conference axe-con
- Podcast a11y rules
- Virtual meetup - a11y talks
- The a11y project
- Accessible advent 2020
- a11y style guide resources
- Website accessibility ultimate guide
- Github repository with list of a11y resources