Tech Notes
If you’ve been anywhere on the internet, you’ve encountered accessibility issues. While you might have not noticed them, they’re everywhere. But why are they so common?
Even though sometimes there are explicit decisions made which deprioritize accessibility, we never assume that there's ill intent when we encounter issues. Generally, the problem is lack of awareness coupled with inexperience, which go hand-in-hand.
For example, one of the common situations we'll see is with small businesses or nonprofits. They might not have a web designer on staff, but they need to have a site to communicate information and want to manage it themselves while having something that looks decent. Using something like WordPress, you can do that without ever touching code, via plugins and templates. There are occasionally ugly hacks that work to create a site, but they can break things for accessibility that the creators aren't even aware of. And if one of those elements is not accessible, that can cause a cascading effect across the whole site and any other site that uses that feature.
In cases like that, we don't think that inaccessibility is malicious at any point. What's less forgivable, however, is when a large corporation with the resources to get accessibility right makes the same mistakes. And that's partly because of the accessibility skills gap in today’s design and engineering teams.
So, in order to reverse the trend that deprioritizes accessibility, we try to build awareness of these issues and to make sure that there are resources available to make something accessible. Here are categories cointaining common accessibility issues:
- Alt Text: Most images need a descriptive alt-text, that is, a textual substitute for non-text content in web pages that effectively describes the content of images, graphs, charts, etc.
- Decorative Images: Sometimes, images are purely decorative. As the purpose of alt text is to convey meaning, having an alternative text for these images is redundant and hinders understanding.
- Captions: Other times, images have captions. In this case, it usually makes sense to provide a visual description in the alt text, but make sure to not be redundant.
- Labels: Often, the purpose of an element is implied with its context and visual appearance. For a screen reader user, the labels provide cues to determine the purpose.
- Keyboard Functionality: All content must be accessible by using the keyboard alone, as many people rely on this form of navigation. Do keep in mind that non-interactive page elements by mouse or touch should not be made keyboard focusable.
- Role: A role should indicate the type of element in order to support interaction in a way that is consistent with the user’s expectations.
If you’d like to learn more about some of these common issues, you can explore them in more depth with some of our previous posts such as “‘Name, Role, Value:’ The Most Frequent Accessibility Issue” and “Creating Accessible Video Content”, and if you’d like to get an early understanding of your website’s accessibility, we go over on how to test it using keyboard navigation in “Is Your Website Accessible? Here's Something to Try” .
There’s no reason for these issues to remain so common. Starting with awareness and learning, followed by a commitment to consider accessibility in every step of the creation process, we can make sure the accessibility skills gap in today’s design and engineering teams doesn’t hinder digital inclusion for people with disabilities.
About AFB Talent Lab
The AFB Talent Lab aims to meet the accessibility needs of the tech industry – and millions of people living with disabilities – through a unique combination of hands-on training, mentorship, and consulting services, created and developed by our own digital inclusion experts. To learn more about our internship and apprenticeship programs or our client services, please visit our website at www.afb.org/talentlab.
