Embracing web accessibility and building the web for everyone
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The web is an enormous place filled with almost any information you could ever imagine. Data around every corner, beautiful websites, social media, and more. With a resource of this magnitude, we have made sure to make it usable by everyone.
What is accessibility in web development?
Web accessibility, in simple terms, allows people with disabilities to:
Navigate the web
Absorb information from the web
Add to the web
Why does accessibility in web development matter?
While it is still fairly new (in the grand scheme of things), imagine life today without the web...
So many people depend on the web every day, whether it be for work, school, personal means, or anything else. Without accessibility from the start, select groups of people are denied the ability to utilize one of our greatest assets.
Also, there are many benefits, aside from the obvious of course, that come from developing with accessibility in mind. For example, making your content accessible also helps with SEO which helps all parties involved.
When creating anything for the web, the ideal goal is for everyone to be able to interact with what you made (theoretically). Forgetting accessibility automatically cuts out a large group of potential visitors to your content, which is not good for anyone involved.
Assistive technology for people with disabilities
Web accessibility pertains to all disabilities:
Hearing
Visual
Mental
Verbal
Physical
There are many different forms of assistive technology that help people to utilize the web. Some of these include (but are not limited to):
SEO with accessibility
As I mentioned before, developing with accessibility in mind will enhance SEO of your site. Search engines have many complex algorithms that are constantly updating and changing with the web. One thing that is certain, though, is that semantically written HTML will provide a higher SEO percentage to your site. This in turn provides you with a higher chance of your site being visited.
An easy way to check your SEO ratings (if using Chrome browser) is to run a quick check with lighthouse. You can run this tool from the Chrome devtools, command line, or even as a node module. This will also give you other helpful metrics from your site like your site's overall performance.
Best semantical practices for accessibility
As a web developer, there are several practices that should be done by default in order to achieve maximum accessibility. Good practice includes but is not limited to:
Give labels to all form items
Add "alt" text to all images
Write code in order using semantic elements
Try to use as few div elements as possible
Help users where possible (I.E. avoid and correct their mistakes)
Write adaptable code to different technologies and viewports
Utilize ARIA on non-standard interactive elements
Make sure on your next project you remember to think about accessibility! Help to create the web for everyone.
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