Design and development posts
Foundations: landmarks
Most websites have common areas of content like a header and footer, a main content area, and one or more navigation blocks. Sighted people can identify these areas based on the way they're styled and the content they contain, but people who are blind cannot do that quite as efficiently. Landmarks, like headings and lists, offer screen reader users a more comparable experience for identifying and navigating between different areas of content.
Foundations: session timeouts
Session timeouts are designed to protect privacy and security, but if they’re implemented incorrectly, they can prevent people from completing tasks on a website.
Foundations: headings
Well structured content helps everybody understand and navigate documents. When coded properly in the HTML, headings, lists, and landmarks help people who use screen readers (software that reads what’s on screen) both scan and navigate pages.
Foundations: colour and meaning
Colour is a valuable tool for communicating meaning. But if you can't see colour, then meaning is lost. Always plan to use colour to convey meaning in combination with another means of identification.
Foundations: colour contrast
Good contrast is about using colours that provide enough variation between the content and background. This is particularly important for people who have conditions that affect vision or colour perception, as well as people browsing on mobile in different light conditions.
Foundations: text descriptions
Text descriptions are primary content, and when images do not have a text description, anyone who cannot see the image will not know its purpose. This means people may be unable to access content or perform related tasks.
Foundations: animations and flashing content
Animation and movement can add to the visual appeal of content, but poorly designed animations can cause problems for many people unless they are implemented correctly.
An inclusive approach to video production
Some people find accessing audio or visual content in video challenging or impossible; for this reason, providing alternatives is a requirement of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. It is a common belief that producing alternatives are expensive and time-consuming. This can be the case when accessibility is not considered at the planning stage of video content.
This article describes an inclusive approach to video production that allows you to create accessible videos without expensive add-ons.
