Last week Aaron Cannon, a web developer and accessibility consultant who is blind, wrote his version of an accessibility checklist. That is not to say that when followed you will have a 100% accessible site, but it’s a great guide to keep in mind when tackling a new design, and a lot of the items are just good semantics. Here are a few of the items from the list.
- Make sure headings use <h1>, rather then a <p> or <div> styled to look like headings. Not only useful for screen readers for the blind, but also search engine optimization and well structured code. Keep in mind there are 6 levels of HTML headings, so even sub-headings can use <h2> through <h6>.
- Make sure to specify the language in the header with the language attribute. For example <html lang="fr"> for a french language document. Similarly if you have other languages sprinkled throughout your document, like on flickr where they great you in multiple languages. <span lang="is">Góðan daginn</span> picard102!
- Always indicate headers in tables using <th> tags. Rather then just using <h1> or <strong> to create a false header.
- Make headings and links especially as descriptive as possible so that when read out of context they still make sense. That means no “Click Here” links.
- Make sure all images for content have an alt attribute filled in with something descriptive but brief. For images that are presentational only leave the alt tag blank.
- Text rendered by the browser is always preferable to text as an image. Image replacement techniques, where each letter is rendered dynamically as an image, is sometimes acceptable though.
Make sure to check out the rest of the list at Aaron’s website, or the PDF of the list put together by Cameron Moll. You can check the accessibility of your site at http://www.vischeck.com/ and http://wave.webaim.org/.
Great advice. I remember the first time I listened to my website in Fire Vox, and hearing how much stuff needed to be changed. Too many web developers use kludges to get the look they want, not thinking about screen readers, or PDA browsers, or printing, or colorblind people, or users of old browsers. There's so many things to think about.
I currently ensure my sites are W3C compliant which should ensure its accessible by most visitors and devices. You make valid points above. Mobile is not that easy to ensure as its the way of the future.