A few days ago, a friend asked me to review his website after it had been redesigned by a web designer. At first glance, the site worked very well and was easy to use, but upon closer inspection, I immediately realized that the site was not suitable for people with disabilities. Text elements were used as images, others were too small, and no image had an additional description. In other words, the site was usable for the average user, but not accessible.
Accessibility is one of the most important topics in the web sector, but unfortunately it is neglected far too often. Accessibility means that everyone can perceive, use and understand a website. It is important to distinguish between perception and understanding. Perception means that one of the senses - sight (viewing or reading), hearing or touch (Braille) - can recognize the content. Understanding means that the content can be intellectually absorbed, ie formulated in a language that is accessible to everyone. In addition, a website must be operable by everyone, be it by mouse movement, keyboard or voice commands.
In order to be able to consistently enforce these three guidelines, there is a fourth guideline: a website must be robust, that is, it must be programmed in such a way that every part of the website can be clearly identified by systems. Of course, not every website for people with visual impairments has to be presented in an audio version by the webmaster, but a specially developed program (APP) must be able to clearly recognize the structure and content of the website and play it back as audio.
There are four groups of accessibility guidelines: A website should (must) be perceivable, usable, understandable and robust. For each of these guidelines there are different measures that are divided into categories A, AA and AAA.
"A" are measures that should definitely be implemented, e.g. all images, photos and videos (except design elements) should be described using text alternatives. The "AA" guidelines are a big step towards inclusion and are suitable for most websites that want to meet legal and ethical accessibility standards. For example, any pre-recorded audio, such as a podcast, should be fully described using a text alternative. "AAA" stands for full accessibility in all aspects, but is sometimes very complex to implement. For example, podcasts for people who cannot hear or read would also have to be made available in sign language.