The internet is an amazing resource that can level the playing field between people of different backgrounds and provide opportunities for education and enrichment for all.
That being said, the internet has not always been designed with diverse users in mind. This has frequently resulted in pages that may look and sound beautiful to the average user, but will be completely inaccessible to those with a wide array of disabilities.
Today, I took the time to look into different ways to make a website accessible. I already knew the importance of using alt descriptions for images and video, and providing transcripts for audible content, however I had not considered other ways of doing so. The methods I learned today - ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) Landmarks, and alternatives to using CAPTCHA technologies.
ARIA Landmarks are a way to identify the structure and navigation of a webpage. By identifying different sections of the web page with roles like "main" or "navigation" or "form", it will be easier for a variety of user agents to parse, such as a screen reader for those with visual disabilities.
CAPTCHAs have been an invaluable tool in preventing bad actors and bots from overloading a website with requests and minimizing bandwidth costs and preventing DDOS attacks. They have also been a fundamental tool in training AI to recognize text and images. However, despite their benefits, they are frequently not designed in an accessible way. There are a variety of alternatives to CAPTCHA that seek to solve this problem. For example, many sites are beginning to use behavioral analysis that observes the way in which you have interacted with the website to determine if you are likely a human or a bot, but many still use a CAPTCHA as a back-up option in case of false results from the behavioral analysis. This definitely seems like a hard problem to solve. As AI and bots become more advanced, we will need to come up with more sophisticated measures to detect them while also being careful to not become inaccessible to humans.
Top comments (2)
important topic! always keep accessibility in mind.
I agree completely! Technology and the internet have become indispensable parts of modern life; it is imperative that we be proactive in designing with all users in mind. To do otherwise would leave entire segments of society behind.