The web is fundamentally designed to be accessible to everyone despite their physical or mental disabilities, language, culture, location or technology. The web creates a place where interaction, learning and communication can be achieved for individuals with disabilities who are barred from access to such things in the physical world. It can open up a whole new world for certain individuals.
However, if we have poorly designed websites that do not take into account those individuals, not only will they be prevented from accessing the same rights as those who do not have disabilities, we will also be cutting ourselves off from potential customers and people who could benefit from the help we provide on our websites. There are many individuals with disabilities who are members of Wealthy Affiliate. I personally think that WA could be a great way for individuals with disabilities to earn an income, because most governments do not pay enough to those who are living on disability. WA could be the answer for those individuals, so please make a conscious decision not to leave them out as you build your websites.
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As far as my empathy and sincerity with disabled people, I have ADHD myself and my son has Asperger's Syndrome and my father was blind in one eye and I worked for in the field of special education for many years, so I tend to always think of those with different needs.
Steph
We will hold hands and walk the road together.
Stay safe.
-Theuns
I'd like to share a couple of things I learned as well in my attempts to adhere to both Section 508 and WCAG Compliance:
- Most browsers (and operating systems) carry a "focus box" function which can be enabled using the Tab Key. This will either appear as a bright colored box or as a thin, broken line. Screen readers will recognize this as the viewer's "focal point", and will read out any text on screen or alt-text that has been included in any image.
- I'm sure this isn't applicable to our sites, but as much as possible, avoid any "drag-and-drop" functions on sites as accessibility tools do not provide any means of emulating this.
- Animated content is challenging to view when it comes to accessibility. As much as possible, keep content static, but if it is needed, ensure that there is an alt-text implemented.
- If you're using video, be sure to check if the media you're using has a separate channel for "described audio" as well as an option for closed captioning. This way you are able to accommodate users with your rich media content.
These are just some of the ones I've come to learn about, and so I felt that it should be shared to everyone here. Hope it helps!
- Raphy
Those are all awesome points too when considering accessibility and I cannot thank you enough for adding to the discussion on it. As I mentioned in the training and earlier in these comments, I only scratched the surface when it comes to creating accessible content for our websites and images. I appreciate all of those added tools. I sometimes have cautioned folks about using the drag and drop because of the reason you stated above.
You are fabulous for providing these added suggestions when taking into the consideration individuals with varying abilities.
Steph
Accessibility is definitely something that can be tricky to pull off, yet the important thing is to have it in mind during any part of web development. There's no umbrella solution for all disabilities as there are plenty of known and unknown ones out there, and each of them have different needs. But the best we can do is to accommodate them as best as possible with the tools that we have.
Best,
Raphy
Well said. It is impossible to cover all the bases for all types of disabilities like you said, but as long as we are making a good faith effort to accommodate those that we can, we are a million steps ahead of so many other web developers out there.
Steph
