There’s more to accessibility than compliance

By Lis Shorten

There is a distinct difference between ‘accessibility compliance’ and ‘an accessible experience’.

Accessibility compliance is all about meeting the requirements of the WCAG – that’s the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which are internationally considered the de facto standards for web accessibility.
Meeting the requirements of these guidelines is a key aspect of web accessibility, but it doesn’t always mean that people with disabilities will be able to use your website successfully.

The goal is to make websites work for everyone. Good standards are important, but what really matters is the user experience.

Here’s an example: If a website uses images for navigation and there’s no alternative text (alt text), the site is clearly not accessible and fails accessibility compliance. If the same website uses frustratingly verbose alt text for the images (such as ‘This image is a green oblong containing white text. If you click on it, it will take you to the Contact Us page for this Company website’ ) instead of just ‘Contact Us’, then you could say that the website is technically accessible because there is alt text; however, the alt text is so bad that the usability of the site is awful for anyone who relies on alt text.

Websites should be quick, easy and enjoyable for everyone to use, so it is important that things don’t just stop at the guidelines. To create great web experiences for users with disabilities you need to involve them in your projects, to help identify and eliminate key areas of confusion and difficulty.