Accessibility Optimization

Accessibility Optimization

It is easy to forget that the internet, as widely accessible as it is, is very difficult for some people to use. The blind and deaf as well as amputees and people with cognitive impairment use the internet as much as anyone else and in order to do so they depend on accessibility tools that navigate your website’s code.  You can make the process more efficient by optimizing accessibility applications and taking into account visual disabilities when designing your website. The first and most fundamental approach is within the HTML code used to construct a page.  HTML incorporates the use of roles to define objects on a page.  Roles like banner, navigation, main, and contentinfo along with others mark the main sections of a webpage so that page readers can find and sort through them for visually impaired users. WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) offers tutorials and tools like WAVE which can test your site for accessibility issues.  Wave can add to your own benefit as well when it picks out skipped heading levels, broken and redundant links, and misused labels. There are design practices to keep in mind as well like taking issues of low contrast and colour based identification into account.  Monotone pages are not intuitive and can slow any user down regardless of ability.  Other aesthetic practices like incorporating videos and sounds should be modified for all users as well.  Video’s that do not pause and applications that load automatically are distracting for everyone but in the case of someone who is dependant on a screen reader, it can affect their ability to operate the computer as well...