The first part of the article introduces the topic of accessibility and explains why the website should meet its accessibility. The second part covers the practical aspects of website accessibility.
The main standard we will base on is WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. A question may arise: “Why?”, Since the European standard EN 301 549 V2.1.2 and the international standard ISO / IEC 405000 were referred to. The answer is very simple. All standards or legal acts refer to the WCAG or duplicate its guidelines.
The existing website should be checked for compliance with the WCAG guidelines, i.e. an audit should be carried out in terms of its availability.
How to do it?
There are many tools available to help you check and determine where and what needs to be improved. The W3C recommends using the toolbar dedicated to web developers for Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. These are free extensions and are available in several languages. You can also find basic guidelines for checking availability on the W3C website, or use automated tools to conduct analysis. Initially, checking is possible and without loading any tools. You can just try resizing the text, view the headings, and inspect the images (their captions and titles).
However, in order to carry out a more thorough audit of the availability of the website for people with limited capabilities, it is worth using automated tools. Where justified, they should be combined with tests carried out by users with disabilities. Automated tools are fairly easy to find. Both free and commercial solutions are available, such as User1st, AChecker, WAVE Web Accessibility Tool. Remember to use more than one solution to ensure full checking, detection of all errors and / or shortcomings on the website. In other words, you need to use several different tools to evaluate different aspects of a website. Organizations obliged to ensure accessibility (according to the Act on digital accessibility), it is recommended to use the services of entities offering research on websites by users with various types of disabilities.
When planning the development and implementation of websites, it should be ensured that the requirements of meeting the current WCAG 2.1 standard are included in the Terms of Reference, with the specification of specific success criteria and the level of availability (A, AA, AAA).
Parameters to be checked to make sure the website is available
Here are the basic requirements:
- everything on the page is logically structured with clear and well-organized titles and headings;
- headers clearly describe the page and are different from the names of other pages so that blind users using a screen reader can understand everything without additional context and low vision users can get the information they need;
- no text, no buttons, and eliminating lights and flashing pictures. Not only can this cause seizures, it also makes it difficult for people with pattern problems to read and receive information;
- each part of the video content has an audio equivalent or a transcript that can be accessed with screen reading tools;
- all audio material must be recorded as text, which will be available on the same page as the audio (audio) file.
Autor: Maryna Kuczyńska (4073)
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