When people think of accessibility, they usually think about it in terms of the physical world. They think of improvements done to buildings to help people with mobility issues. This can include:

  • Ramps for stairs and door sills
  • Elevators
  • Curbless showers
  • Railings for stairs
  • Handles to help sitting and standing in bathrooms
  • Automatic doors

For disabilities dealing with hearing and sight, these type of accessibility improvements include:

  • Closed Captions/Sub-titles for video
  • Descriptive Video (describes what is happening while the video plays)
  • Sign Language interrupters
  • Accessible Pedestrian Signals at traffic lights that provide auditory, visual, and vibrotactile information
  • Braille identifying elevator controls

No one really thinks of accessibility and websites though, until they are someone who needs it.

What is Website Accessibility?

Web accessibility refers to websites that allow all visitors to use it in an unobtrusive and efficient way regardless of a disability or impairment. These websites comply with certain design and development guidelines which ensures the website and the content provided by the website is set up to accommodate persons with disabilities.

Why is Website Accessibility Needed?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 6 people have a significant disability (1.3 billion/16% of the world population). This statistic doesn’t include more minor disabilities including people who have less sever vision or hearing loss. If it did, this statistic would be much higher.

For example the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 1 in 4 adults (27%) in the United States have some form of disability.

It’s also important to remember that there are many types and levels of disabilities including:

  • Vision (complete blindness to partial vision loss, color blindness, contrast, etc…)
  • Hearing (total deafness to partial hearing loss)
  • Speech
  • Learning and Cognitive
  • Physical (from minor problems like shakiness in the hands to more severe issues)

With these high statistics, this makes website accessibility a requirement and not optional. Not only do we have a moral obligation, but it makes business sense as well. Why would you want to potentially prevent 27% of your customer base from using your website effectively?

Who Sets the Web Accessibility Standards?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops international standards for the Web. This includes markup and style sheet languages like HTML and CSS. These standards are based on the principles of accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) by W3C develops standards and support materials to help us understand and implement accessibility. This initiative is responsible for creating the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Currently the WCAG 2.2 is the W3C Recommendation web standard.

Ultimately it is the local government of your business and website visitors that sets what standards need to be met. If your target audience is located in just your city then you will need to meet your own country, state/province, and any local laws when it comes to website accessibility. Most governments that have web accessible laws use a version of WCAG and set a minimum success criterion.

For example, government websites and websites from certain sized business who are located or target visitors in Ontario, Canada must meet WCAG 2.0 level AA success criteria as laid out in the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). By 2025 most Ontario business websites will have to meet these standards.

Government websites in the United States will have to meet a slightly different standard (Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act). The Justice Department just released (as of May 2024) an advanced copy of the final rule mandating technical standards for state and local governments’ web and mobile app accessibility. Websites from these entities will have 2-3 years to conform with WCAG 2.1 AA (the 2 or 3 years for compliance is based on population size).

How is Website Accessibility Enforced?

If required by law, then enforcement will come from the government. This could happen through some sort of review process or through complaints from the public.

If your business technically isn’t legally required to ensure website accessibility, you still must be careful as you can still face legal or financial repercussions for being inaccessible. In the United States in 2023 there was 4605 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) related lawsuits.

What are Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?

The WCAG 2.2 has 13 guidelines. The guidelines are organized under 4 principles:

  • Perceivable
    All visitors can perceive or understand and be aware of the content you present on your website.
  • Operable
    Any visitor can use the website without disruption. All visitors can use each part of the site’s functionality.
  • Understandable
    Copy and media (images and video) content must be understandable by any visitor.
  • Robust
    Content should be robust enough to be easily interpreted by visitors with various assistive technologies.

For each guideline, there are testable success criteria. The success criteria are at three levels: A, AA, and AAA.

The success criteria are what determine “conformance” to WCAG. That is, in order to meet WCAG, the content needs to meet the success criteria.

What are some of the things you look at to make Websites Accessible??

The 3 main areas you look at are:

Navigation

Can the website be navigated, and the features used by other devices beside a mouse or a touch screen? You would be surprised how many websites fail at this. Other software solutions and devices like keyboards which can help with user inputs need to be able to navigate the website.

Page and Content Structure

Is the page and content laid out in a way that assisted technology like screen readers can relay to a user what is being displayed on the page. For example, does the user understand that the link being described to him is in a menu or that an image has a proper description matching the context of the copy including any text that may be embedded in the image. Does a blind person have enough information available to him about the page that he can fill out a form including letting them know when an error has occurred.

Color Contrast and Font Size

Can a person with poor vision still read the headings and copy of the website or does it blend into the background due to the font size being too small and/or the text and background color are too similar.

How do you Make a Website Accessible?

Software that you install on the website which attempts to make it accessible (called Overlays) do not work, and in fact can make things worse for someone with a disability. 30% of lawsuits last year which dealt with websites not being accessible had an overlay installed already.

Accessibility is extremely complex and affects all aspects of a website. This includes:

  • User interface
  • Structure of the page
  • Colors and their contrast with each other
  • Copy and Media

The best way to figure out how to make your website accessible is having a website accessibility audit done by a reputable agency. This audit will show what improvements are needed to make a website more accessible.

One thing to remember is that website accessibility is an on-going endeavor that is never finished. Every page update and content change need to be checked to ensure accessibility has been met.

If you are interested in eSilverStrike Consulting in performing this audit, please contact us for more information.