Web Accessibility Overview

Owned by Catherine Armstrong (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 30, 2020
2 min read

Since creating and maintaining websites is a collaborative process, it takes the work of many to ensure accessibility compliance. Web developers, web designers, content creators, content editors, and subject matter experts all play a role. To this end, it is important to distinguish the two main areas that dictate how accessible our websites are: 1) web content and 2) web development.

*Four Critical Rules

  1. Content must be perceivable - Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This means that users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can't be invisible to all of their senses).

  2. Content must be operable - User interface components and navigation must be operable. This means that users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform).

  3. Content must be understandable - Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable. This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding).

  4. Content must be robust - Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means that users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible).

If any of these are not true, users with disabilities will not be able to use the web.

*Information taken from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – read more by following this link to their site