Web Guidelines 2.0 for Global Accessibility Awareness Day

19 May is Global Accessibility Awareness Day! This day was created to create more awareness for digital access and inclusion for people with disabilities and impairments. Groove Digital likes to dwell on this day through this blog.

The Internet is often seen as an accessible medium and, of course, that is how it is meant to be. Unfortunately, not everyone has the full website experience. Millions of Dutch people have one or more disabilities. Think, for example, of people who are blind, partially sighted or colour-blind. The Dutch government has written a full page on what digital accessibility is and what the guidelines are. 

Web accessibility covers all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including:

• Auditory
• Cognitive
• Neurological
• Physical
• Speech
• Visual

How do you make a website digitally accessible? Groove Digital gives three basic tips!

1. Add a text alternative to an image, also called (alt text). This can be used on your website as 
2. Use contrasting colours
3. No 404 pages 

Here is an overview of tools you can use to test whether your website is accessible enough.

• Accessibility Scanner
• Contrast checker 
• Web accessibility

Other aids:

The hashtag #A11y is very valuable when searching for information, tips and tricks on accessibility.

#A11y is another way of writing the word 'accessibility'. It is a shortened version for Twitter and other social networking sites that limit the number of characters. '
A' is the first letter; there are 11 letters between, and 'y' at the end. Add the hash tag and you have #a11y, although the use of "a11y" to abbreviate the word is also used outside social media.

For curated digital accessibility tweets follow @a11y we do that too.

By researching the hashtag, we found a good tip for both site owners and app developers:

"When using default sounds in your application, make sure you allow your users to change them to their liking or needs." - Andre Louis (musician, tech-lover, self-proclaimed geek)"

Notifications

If you choose to use standard sounds/tones in your application, make sure that the user can adjust them for accessibility reasons. The user should be able to choose to make one notification sound more important than another. It is also better to have higher frequency sounds (such as notifications from WhatsApp, Facebook or Twitter) be shorter than those from push notifications that come much less frequently.

Remove barriers to technology step by step. We found this quote fitting;

"Accessibility is a continuum. It's not about compliance. It's something that can always be improved, just like website performance or conversions. It's about continual progress." ~ Ronnie Burt

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Do you need help making a website? Groove Digital is ready for you.