WCAG 2.1, Simplified: How to Make Your Website Accessible
Web accessibility principles, guidelines, testing tools, and more
Web accessibility is an incredibly vital aspect to consider when developing a website or web application, yet so many companies either ignore accessibility guidelines or don’t understand how to implement them properly.
Some argue that making your site accessible is a moral obligation. All people, regardless of ability or disability, deserve to be able to use the internet and to access the wealth of knowledge that can be found there.
Others take a more pragmatic approach and argue that accessibility can be treated as a financial problem: is the return on investment for making your site accessible worth it? By not following accessibility guidelines, you risk alienating users with disabilities and losing their business. So, is the engineering cost worth the potential lost market share?
Personally, I fall into the first camp. I believe we all should feel morally obligated to make our sites as accessible as possible. Not necessarily because it is the most financially sensible thing to do, but because it is the right thing to do.
(Especially if your business is in the education space or provides an essential service. By not creating accessible content, you are in a sense saying, “Those with disabilities are not worth educating. You are not worth our time or attention.”)
I think, deep down, we as developers want to do the right thing. The problem then stems largely from the fact that many developers do not have any experience making their sites accessible or do not know how.
For instance, have you ever tried to use a screen reader on your site? Or do you know how to use a screen reader at all? Do you know what tools are out there to help audit your site for accessibility issues? Do you know and understand what guidelines you should be following?
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, commonly referred to just by its acronym, WCAG, are a set of guidelines and recommendations for how to make your web content more accessible. The current version of this…
