Web accessibility is geared towards making the same information accessible to individuals, despite any impairments that the users may have.

According to data from the World Bank, 15% of the entire world’s population experiences some or the other form of disability, so we are talking about a huge number of users here since the internet has become widespread.

In the day and age of the all-pervasive nature of the world wide web, it acts as an important resource in many fields such as recreation, employment, education, health-care, government, e-commerce, and much more. The web must be as accessible as possible for providing equal access and opportunity to the people with disability or impairment as well, which in turn, will help them in active participation in life and society as a whole, which is now completely dependent on the internet and digital applications.

One more reason why an accessible UX is a necessity is that websites and digital applications make for the easiest way for disabled or impaired people to do business or garner knowledge, as you need not physically move about and can take care of matters remotely.

UX Accessibility also overlaps with the other UX best practices such as the mobile design of the web, good usability, and search engine optimization (SEO).

The different accessibility barriers pertaining to print and audio-visual media can overcome through user-friendly web technologies.

UX Accessibility basically means the users' ability to use the products/services. This does not reach to the extent of attaining goals through usability. Web designers and developers need to consider creating such outputs that accommodate the needs of all kinds of potential users, whether they are disabled or facing situational barriers, such as in multitasking.

It entirely depends on the web developers, however, making the website accessible for impaired people, will ultimately make it accessible to everyone.

This HTML attribute is used to describe images so that there is a visual tool hiding the HTML code while building a website. Using these tags allows you to enter image descriptions.

Adding captions to tables using a caption tag makes them more comprehensible to screen readers, compared to a simple bold-texted title to the table. Also adding the “scope” element as well as neat labelling of the new rows and columns in the table helps provide context to the screen readers.

Everything put upon a website should conceivably be carried out by using only a keyboard; therefore, a developer should never mess with the default navigation buttons.

Messing with the default HTML tags will confuse the screen readers as they all are used to a particular method of reading the web page elements.

The audio-visual elements on any website should be accompanied by closed captions, which are not only useful for providing accessibility to the impaired or disabled users, but also to the users who may use your website under such circumstances where they cannot play the audio, like in a public place or workplace.

Providing text transcripts for audio elements like podcasts or video elements like study lectures will make it easier for Google and the other search engines in indexing the content and also boost the Google ranking of the said website.

Most of the internet should be treated as a public space and should ensure equal access of services to every user regardless of his/her ability. This is where UX accessibility comes into play.

Categories