Web accessibility is required to make a website accessible for all users, irrespective of their level of ability. It puts emphasis on eliminating the barriers that can block the access of a user to the website. To address the accessibility concerns in web design, one needs to take a proactive approach toward developing a fully inclusive online platform.
Companies like AccessiBe specialize in creating accessible websites that can be accessed by people with visual, cognitive, physical, and auditory disabilities.
AccessiBe talks about addressing key website accessibility concerns
The world is progressing towards further digitalization with every passing day. A large chunk of the global populace uses the web today. Many of them also take the ability to browse online content and surf the web for granted. But people with disabilities do not have such a luxury. Not all websites are designed keeping accessibility concerns in mind. Hence, many individuals with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairment aren’t able to access these websites properly. As per the World Health Organization (WHO), over 2 billion people around the world live with a disability. 20% of them essentially live with great functional difficulties in their day-to-day lives. Hence, websites that aren’t accessible will be excluding millions of individuals from using their websites. Creating an accessible website through AccessiBe, on the other hand, considerably elevates the appeal of the site to a sizable potential customer base.
To understand why web accessibility is a major issue that needs to be addressed, one needs to learn about various types of disabilities and their impact on online experiences. People with distinguished disabilities encounter a varied set of problems when using the web. Users having a visual impairment especially face issues online owing to the visual nature of the web. Blinder users commonly use a screen reader to access websites. They might even use a refreshable Braille display to convert website text to Braille. Users having low vision are often only able to properly see and understand online content if their screen is magnified. On the other hand, for most deaf users, audio-based content is their biggest barrier on the web. Video and audio accessibility issues can be addressed by providing text-based alternatives to the audio script.
To make a website accessible to all, one must address potential vulnerabilities focusing on 3 main categories:
- Screen-reader adjustments (for users with vision impairment)
- Keyboard navigation adjustments (for motor-impaired users)
- Readability, user interface, and design adjustments (for users having vision impairment)
The ideal source for trying to understand web accessibility and ways to address its major concerns would be the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) platform. W3C offers guidelines on web accessibility to reduce the hassles faced by people with disabilities while exploring the web. These guidelines are popularly known as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. Such guidelines cover the prime areas to put emphasis on when trying to make websites accessible. (WCAG) 2.0, in fact, forms the basis of laws on web accessibility in many countries around the planet.
