The first time I added content to a website I didn’t know anything about accessibility. I made mistakes like changing the weight of the headings by increasing the font size and making them bold. I didn’t alt-text my images. And I’m pretty sure I had links with text saying ‘click here’.
Since working at Studio 24, I’ve learned a lot about accessibility and now I always write content in an accessible way whether that’s for websites, social media, or newsletters. I’m lucky to work at an agency that values accessibility and I was really grateful to be able to learn about it and improve my communications.
There’s still a lot I don’t know. But that’s OK.
I’ve also had to learn that accessibility is a journey. Although I understand the technical process of making my marketing content accessible, one thing that was missing was understanding how people with disabilities use the web. That’s why I was really pleased to take the W3C course: Digital Accessibility Foundations.
At the heart of the course is the concept that accessibility is about people and when you design for the few you help the many. In the course, you learn about web accessibility through real stories of people with disabilities and their interaction in the digital world.
In a nutshell, the course covers:
- How people use assistive technologies e.g. screen readers, digital braille displays, sip and puff machines.
- How people use adaptive strategies and why e.g. resizing text and text to speech.
- The business case for accessibility and making sure your website is used by the widest possible audience.
- Principles, standards and checks including how to do your first checks for web accessibility.
- How to integrate accessibility into your design and development processes so everyone on the team plays their part.
I’ll give you one example that really stayed with me about responsive design. I knew that responsive design was important so you can use websites via your mobile phone. What I didn’t know is that responsive design is important for people with sight loss who adapt the presentation of website content to make it easier to read.
People with sight loss may want to enlarge the text on a website. In unresponsive websites, the enlarged text would result in excessive scrolling both horizontally and vertically making a really bad user experience. Whereas a responsive website will refit the enlarged text into a single column to eliminate the need for horizontal scrolling and make the text much easier to read.
Accessibility is not about a person’s abilities or impairments, it’s about design. Bad design is disabling. When designs provide the flexibility to meet all users’ needs, then they are enabling. This is often called the ‘social model’ of disability.
The course also offered really helpful resources, many of which can be found on the W3C website. My favourites are:
- Help with writing a website accessibility policy.
- The website accessibility statement generator.
- Easy checks for your first accessibility review.
If you work in digital – and that includes everyone from developers and designers to content authors and project managers – then this is a great course for you to take. It’s suitable for technical and non-technical audiences (I’m very much in the non-technical category!), can be completed at your own pace, and is free of charge.
The course is a wonderful first step if you are new to accessibility because it shows you how people use the web. And once you understand that you see that accessibility isn’t a niche area. The web should be open to everyone and we can all play our part in making the web a more equitable place.
As Tim Berners-Lee famously said: “The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
Do I know everything about accessibility now? Absolutely not. But it’s been another important step in my journey.
Studio 24 is building a more accessible, sustainable web – one impactful project at a time. Read more about Studio 24’s approach to accessibility or see our Guide to Accessible Content.