| Interactive Media Design

Accessibility

Web is an amazing tool for reaching to different audiences globally weather it is for sharing knowledge, informing people, generating new ideas or doing business. We all use web everyday from the moment we wake up till we sleep for different purposes. Given the importance of web in our lives and the impact it has, it is our responsibility to make sure that everyone can easily access the information we are sharing.

Accessibility is not only for people that have special needs but it can enhance the experience of everyone using a site that has taken some steps to make the content accessible.

Important

The government of Ontario have the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005open in new window which under its accessible websites and web content sectionopen in new window lists the requirement for websites to be complaint with Web Content Accessibility Guideline 2.0open in new window

Impairments

In order to understand the methods we need to use for making our website accessible we need to first understand the challenges that a user with an impairment might experience while using our website.

Visual

Visual impairments can be partial or full blindness, colour blindness, cataracts or age.

Things we can do

  • Allow to resize the text
  • Add visual hints in change of state than just colour change
  • Add high contrast between elements, specially background and foreground
  • Test website on screen readers
  • Add alt attributes for images
  • Do not auto play sounds

Mobility and dexterity

In case of web users these impairments relate to movement and control that affects using mouse or keyboards due to limited movement, shakes, difficulty holding a mouse or difficulty with fine control, missing a limb.

Things we can do

  • Make website keyboard accessible
  • Increase the hit area for links and buttons
  • Add an alternative to hover state effects and animations

Auditory

Impairments that hinders a persons ability to hear, deafness or partial deafness.

Things we can do

  • Provide captions and transcripts
  • Don't auto play sounds
  • Don't rely only on sounds as indicators

Cognitive

Generally considered something that affects a person’s brain, e.g. dyslexia, memory issues, problem solving issues, attention deficits, hyperactivity, reading disabilities, etc.

Things we can do

  • Provide user orientation
  • Be consistent with content organization and headings
  • Use images and graphics
  • Style links to be identified easily on the page
  • Improve text readability
    • Use clean font
    • Optimize words per line
    • Add line height, between 1.25 - 1.6

Tools

You can use software, browser extensions and websites to check for accessibility issues and test your webpages.

Software & Extensions

WebSites

Articles