There are over 20 million blind adults in the United States, approximately 10% of whom use screen readers to access the internet. Likewise, roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness. Many government contracts are beginning to require websites to be accessible and many companies who are not legally required to build accessible websites are starting to do it regardless. What goes into making a website accessible? How can you determine whether or not your website is? This presentation will discuss both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.
Best Practices for Building Accessible Websites in Wordpress
1. B U I L D I N G A C C E S S I B L E W E B S I T E S I N
W O R D P R E S S
BEST PRACTICES
@nancythanki @misfitideas
2.
3. “The power of the Web is in its universality.
Access by everyone regardless of disability is
an essential aspect.”
– T I M B E R N E R S - L E E
W 3 C D I R E C T O R A N D I N V E N T O R O F T H E W O R L D W I D E
W E B
4. users spend more time
on your site consuming
your content and
engaging with your
brand
intuitive navigation
+
properly labeled links
and images
+
user friendly design
aesthetics
5. • 20 million blind adults in the US
• 10% use screen readers
• 8% of men and 0.5% of women are color blind
F A C T S
6. potential clients + worldwide users
=
equal unprecedented access to information and equal opportunity
7. W H A T makes a website accessible?
H O W how can you know if yours is accessible?
8. T Y P E S O F
D I S A B I L I T I E S
auditory
cognitive / neurological
physical
visual
9. A S S I S T I V E
T E C H N O L O G Y
braille display
screen reader
text-to-speech
voice browser
voice recognition
keyboard navigation
10. S C R E E N
R E A D E R S
• nvaccess’ NVDA reader
• Chrome Vox
• Mozilla’s Fangs Screen
Reader Emulator
• Apple’s VoiceOver
11. A D O P T I V E S T R A T E G I E S
• content formats: auditory, tactile, visual
• presentation: distinguishing visual content and
providing ways to understand audio content
• user interaction: typing, writing, and clicking
• design solutions: navigating and finding content
12. E V A L U A T I O N
T O O L S * * *
• Color Oracle
• WAVE-Web Accessibility
Virtual Evaluator
• Web Accessibility
Checker
• AChecker
• Accessibility Valet
***no tool has been deemed able to replace common sense; please
keep that in mind
17. D O E S I T M A T T E R H O W
A C C E S S I B L E Y O U R
C O N T E N T I S I F N O B O D Y
E V E R F I N D S I T ?
18. users spend more time
on your site, consuming
your content, and
engaging with your
brand
intuitive navigation
+
properly labeled links
and images
+
user friendly design
aesthetics
19. WHAT WE SEE vs WHAT SEARCH ENGINES
SEE
ALT TEXT= SEARCH ENGINES CAN “SEE” IMAGES
<img src=“grapes.jpg” alt=“A man
holding a bundle of grapes.”/>
20. C O N T E N T I S K I N G …
B U T H E R E A R E S O M E O T H E R T H I N G S T O O
• Providing a clear and proper heading
structure and avoiding empty headings
• Providing descriptive link text (i.e., avoiding
“click here”)
• Ensuring page titles are descriptive, yet
succinct
• Not relying on JavaScript for things that
don’t need it
• Avoiding mouse dependent interaction
• Using standard web formats when possible
• Providing transcripts and captions for video
• Identifying the language of pages and page
content
• Allowing multiple ways of finding content
(e.g., search, a site map, table of contents,
clear navigation, etc.)
• Providing useful links to related and
relevant resources
• Ensuring URLs are human readable and
logical
• Presenting a clear and consistent
navigation and page structure
• Avoiding CSS and other stylistic markup to
present content or meaning*
• Defining abbreviations and acronyms
• Have unique and relevant titles and meta
descriptions
21. R E S O U R C E S T O C O N S I D E R
• WebAIM: web accessibility in mind: http://webaim.org/intro/
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): http://www.w3.org/WAI/
• WAI Resources: http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/
• Quicktips: http://www.w3.org/WAI/quicktips/
• Implementation Plan for Web Accessibility: http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/Overview
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php
• Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools: Overview: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
• Accessibility Evaluation Resources: http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/Overview.html
• Easy Checks - A First Review of Web Accessibility: http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/preliminary
• Complete list of web accessibility evaluation tools: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/complete
22. @ n a n c y t h a n k i
n a n c y t h a n k i . c o m
BEST PRACTICES
@ m i s f i t i d e a s . c o m
m i s f i t i d e a s . c o m
h e l l o @ m i s f i t i d e a s . c o m
Notes de l'éditeur
Session Description:
There are over 20 million blind adults in the United States, approximately 10% of whom use screen readers to access the internet. Likewise, roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness. Many government contracts are beginning to require websites to be accessible and many companies who are not legally required to build accessible websites are starting to do it regardless. What goes into making a website accessible? How can you determine whether or not your website is? This presentation will discuss both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.
Intended Audience:
beginners, designers
Past Speaking experience:
I’m a young professional, and I cannot point to several instances of leading presentations or classrooms. As an undergrad, I was asked to be an ambassador to prospective students and typically gave 5-6 talks per year to large groups of students who were trying to decide which college to attend. These days, as both a web designer and a filmmaker, I’ve been teaching both clients and colleagues as much as I can teach them, and learning just as much in turn. In web design, I’m often teaching the same (or very similar) lessons at different times to different clients. This is especially true of folks who are new to WordPress, or people who have never published anything online. From what I can gather, these lessons have been very helpful to my clients, and I’d like to share these lessons with others in an organized, wider-reaching way. I love WordPress and what people can do with it. An 80 year old who couldn’t use Gmail now runs her own website… how incredible is that?! But at the same time, I’m teaching her the same set of lessons that I’m teaching the 30 year old who’s never operated a website before and wants to start a blog. I've learned that there are a lot of “gotchas” and “wish I’d have knowns” in WordPress and lot of them relate to simply being a smart WordPress consumer. Attending WordCamps in Atlanta and Birmingham have been especially eyeopening in terms of learning from others' experiences as I’m sure speaking at WordCamps Asheville and Seattle will be. There’s a lot to go over, but I think I can help folks learn a lot of these lessons, and I’d love to be given the chance to try :-)
Speaker Bio:
I take photos, shoot film, design stuff, and try not to be too pretentious about it. My very first client was a woman in her eighties running a spectacularly successful cancer non-profit program…who didn’t really use email, let alone anything else. I trained her to set-up and maintain a WordPress site. Throughout undergrad I gave regular talks to perspective students and parents on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of college. Now as both a web designer and filmmaker, I’ve realized that I’m teaching very similar lessons to many of my clients, especially those that haven’t worked much with visual design, on how to avoid the pitfalls of “en vogue” to create products that can withstand the test of rising and falling fashions in typography, photography, film, and design.
—————
I take photos, shoot film, design stuff, and try not to be too pretentious about it. My very first client was a woman in her eighties running a spectacularly successful cancer non-profit program…who didn’t really use email, let alone anything else. I trained her to set-up and maintain a WordPress site. Throughout undergrad I gave regular talks to perspective students and parents on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of college. Now as both a web designer and filmmaker, I’ve realized that I’m teaching very similar lessons to many of my clients, especially those that haven’t worked much with visual design, on how to avoid the pitfalls of “en vogue” to create products that can withstand the test of rising and falling fashions in typography, photography, film, and design.
There are over 20 million blind adults in the United States, approximately 10% of whom use screen readers to access the internet. Likewise, roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness. Many government contracts are beginning to require websites to be accessible and many companies who are not legally required to build accessible websites are starting to do it regardless. What goes into making a website accessible? How can you determine whether or not your website is? This presentation will discuss both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.
it is essential that the Web be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities aka the UN recognizes Web accessibility as a basic human right
Developing a web accessibility business case for your organization:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/Overview
build flexible sites for slow internet connections, temporary disabilities, and changing abilities
potential clients: government contracts, user aware companies
people are able to use & contribute to the Web more effectively
equal access and equal opportunity to an unprecedented access to information and opportunity
type of content
size and complexity
development tools
environment
color blindness
repetitive stress injury
hard of hearing —> total deafness
levels of blindness/sight
ADHD
dyslexia
deaf-blindess
audio
videos with sound
lack of captions
inability to customize captions
cognitive
clearly structured content
consistent labeling
ability to disable distracting content
physical
ergonomic keyboard/mouse
head pointer
on-screen keyboard
voice recognition
eye tracking
visual
enlarging/reducing text and image size
customize-able settings for fonts/colors/spacing
combining audio and visual content
providing alternative presentations
captions and other alternatives for multimedia
text transcripts
audio descriptions
content presented in different ways
mark-up content properly (headings, lists, tables, etc)
sequences of info
content is easier to see and hear
foreground is distinguishable from background
i.e. color to convey info, color combos, text resize-ability, minimal use of images of text
keyboard functionality is possible
easily navigable content
clear titles
informed of current location
When accessibility features are effectively implemented in one component, the other components are more likely to implement them.
When an accessibility feature is implemented in most content, developers and users are more likely to demand that user agents support it.
When authoring tools make a feature easy to implement, developers are more likely to implement it in their content.
When developers want to implement an accessibility feature in their content, they are more likely to demand that their authoring tool make it easy to implement.
When Web browsers, media players, assistive technologies, and other user agents support an accessibility feature, users are more likely to demand it and developers are more likely to implement it in their content.
It is essential that several different components of Web development and interaction work together in order for the Web to be accessible to people with disabilities. These components include:
content - the information in a Web page or Web application, including:
natural information such as text, images, and sounds
code or markup that defines structure, presentation, etc.
Web browsers, media players, and other "user agents"
assistive technology, in some cases - screen readers, alternative keyboards, switches, scanning software, etc.
users' knowledge, experiences, and in some cases, adaptive strategies using the Web
developers - designers, coders, authors, etc., including developers with disabilities and users who contribute content
authoring tools - software that creates Web sites
evaluation tools - Web accessibility evaluation tools, HTML validators, CSS validators, etc.
Social issue=more actively participate in society
equal opportunity to:
unprecedented access to info
unprecedented interaction
If your image includes text, be sure to repeat it in your alt-text.
Keep your alt-text short. Think of it like a tweet.
Incorporate SEO keywords into your alt-text: search engines will reward for relevancy
Make your alt-text meaningful to your readers.
“Why am I using this image?” and, “What message am I trying to convey to my readers with this image?”
Session Description:
There are over 20 million blind adults in the United States, approximately 10% of whom use screen readers to access the internet. Likewise, roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness. Many government contracts are beginning to require websites to be accessible and many companies who are not legally required to build accessible websites are starting to do it regardless. What goes into making a website accessible? How can you determine whether or not your website is? This presentation will discuss both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.
Intended Audience:
beginners, designers
Past Speaking experience:
I’m a young professional, and I cannot point to several instances of leading presentations or classrooms. As an undergrad, I was asked to be an ambassador to prospective students and typically gave 5-6 talks per year to large groups of students who were trying to decide which college to attend. These days, as both a web designer and a filmmaker, I’ve been teaching both clients and colleagues as much as I can teach them, and learning just as much in turn. In web design, I’m often teaching the same (or very similar) lessons at different times to different clients. This is especially true of folks who are new to WordPress, or people who have never published anything online. From what I can gather, these lessons have been very helpful to my clients, and I’d like to share these lessons with others in an organized, wider-reaching way. I love WordPress and what people can do with it. An 80 year old who couldn’t use Gmail now runs her own website… how incredible is that?! But at the same time, I’m teaching her the same set of lessons that I’m teaching the 30 year old who’s never operated a website before and wants to start a blog. I've learned that there are a lot of “gotchas” and “wish I’d have knowns” in WordPress and lot of them relate to simply being a smart WordPress consumer. Attending WordCamps in Atlanta and Birmingham have been especially eyeopening in terms of learning from others' experiences as I’m sure speaking at WordCamps Asheville and Seattle will be. There’s a lot to go over, but I think I can help folks learn a lot of these lessons, and I’d love to be given the chance to try :-)
Speaker Bio:
I take photos, shoot film, design stuff, and try not to be too pretentious about it. My very first client was a woman in her eighties running a spectacularly successful cancer non-profit program…who didn’t really use email, let alone anything else. I trained her to set-up and maintain a WordPress site. Throughout undergrad I gave regular talks to perspective students and parents on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of college. Now as both a web designer and filmmaker, I’ve realized that I’m teaching very similar lessons to many of my clients, especially those that haven’t worked much with visual design, on how to avoid the pitfalls of “en vogue” to create products that can withstand the test of rising and falling fashions in typography, photography, film, and design.
—————