What Is Web Accessibility? 

Introduction

Web Accessibility aims to make web pages accessible and usable by the maximum number of people, regardless of their knowledge, personal abilities, or the technical characteristics of the access device use.

Barriers also exist on the Internet and affect millions of people with disabilities worldwide. These citizens with motor, sensory or cognitive difficulties currently depend more than ever on advances in web accessibility so as not to be left out of educational, economic, and social development.

We spend, on average, 6 hours and 43 minutes browsing the Internet every day, as revealed by the Digital 2020 report published by We Are Social and Hootsuite. Despite these data, the Internet continues to be an unattainable territory for the vast majority of people with disabilities globally, as denounced by the international consortium World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) through its Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

What Is Web Accessibility Importance

Web accessibility combines programming, design, and technology to build a barrier-free Internet that allows all users to understand, learn, navigate, and fully interact with the web. Just as industry and architecture, for example, conceive objects, vehicles, and spaces adapted to the needs of people with reduced mobility or cognitive, visual, and auditory problems, the Internet must also follow this path.

The WAI initiative is the worldwide promoter of this branch that ensures that web pages and their contents meet universal usability and accessibility criteria so that any Internet user can move around the network regardless of their physical, intellectual, or sensory limitations.

Accessible websites also benefit from other aspects: increased potential visits, faster-loading speed, improved positioning and online reputation (Trust Rank), bandwidth savings, more excellent compatibility with browsers and devices, etc

W3c And Web Accessibility Levels

The WAI also classifies web pages according to the accessibility of the content, establishing the following levels:

• Level A: is the least demanding and includes pages that meet specific compliance criteria determined by the WCAG, such as the availability of subtitles for recorded audio or text alternatives for audiovisual content, etc.
• AA level is the intermediate and most required by the entities that issue web accessibility certifications. It brings together the websites that respect more advanced criteria such as the availability of subtitles for live audio, audio description, scalable text size, etc.
• Level AAA: it is the strictest and groups the websites that meet the most demanding criteria, such as interpretation by sign language, extended audio description. Explanation of abbreviations, and the absence of elements that flash more than three times per second, etc.

Tools To Check Web Accessibility

Some online applications can quickly and elementally verify the degree of accessibility of web pages. In this way, it is possible to know what needs to be improve on the web to make it more accessible according to the WCAG guidelines. Next, we present the most recognize:

• Web Accessibility Test (TAW): This tool for designers and developers allows. The automatic analysis of a page to the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines. In both cases, the TAW generates a report with the test results.
• HERA: This tool is only available for the WCAG 1.0 standard. In this case, it performs an automatic and prior analysis of the website. Informing us at the end of the errors found and the aspects that we must review.

About this Course

In this course, you’ll get hands-on experience making web applications accessible. You’ll understand when and why users need accessibility. Then you’ll dive into the “how”: making a page work properly with screen readers and managing input focus. (e.g., the highlight you see when tabbing through a form.)

You’ll understand what “semantics” and “semantic markup” mean for web pages and add ARIA markup to enable navigating the interface with a range of assistive devices. Finally, you’ll learn styling techniques that help users with partial vision navigate your pages quickly and reliably.

Benefits Of Respecting Accessibility Recommendations

• Ethics: Designing accessible websites means respecting the right of all people to enjoy equal opportunities and access to information.
• Social: an accessible website may be visited by users with disabilities or specific needs. With slow connections or obsolete computer equipment. People have some disability, and around 21% of the entire population is over 60 years of age. This means that with an accessible site, your website can reach up to 30 percent more people.
• Economic: more users mean more sales. Setting up a website involves time and money. If the potential client who visits it encounters problems accessing the information (products), they will likely stop seeing it. In addition. Certain segments of the population with specific needs. Or over 60 years of age have a disposable income that makes them a beautiful public.
• Compatibility: By following Web standards and separating content from design (CSS style sheets). Accessible Web sites are more compatible with a wider variety of desktop and mobile terminals and screen resolutions.
• Improvement in download times: the layout with CSS style sheets lightens the page’s total weight. It makes downloading and presenting the content much more efficient than that of pages. Laid out using tables or with the definition of styles included in HTML.

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