Accessibility Issues You Wouldn't Think About

Keith Gable — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:23:00 -0500

When you write web pages, accessibility should be a key issue on your mind. Everyone should be on the alt bandwagon, and hopefully thinking about how someone with an aural or a visual disability might parse your web page. But there are some things you just don’t even think about and anyone pointing it out would just be helping you, right? :)

The issue I’m speaking of is writing content with phrases in it that require aural or visual ability. For example:

Please look around on our site.

Can you look around a site if you can’t see it? I wouldn’t think so. “Please browse our site” might make a little more sense but it has a separate issue of basically begging your visitor to browse your page without giving them any information as to what they’re browsing to. Give them a short list of awesome things you can do: “You can learn about X, Y, and Z on our site.”

Click here.

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody’s around, does it make a sound? If you press a mouse button and can’t hear it make a sound, does it click? Well, no. You should always link to a phrase or word that makes sense. “Click here to schedule a tour.” is inferior compared to “Schedule a tour today to learn about X, Y, and Z.”

Another thing I’ll bring up is the Oxford comma. Growing up, they taught us to always use an Oxford comma, so pardon me if I sound biased. Anyways, I always say to include it because screen readers are stupid and won’t put the right emphasis on a list consistently unless you explicitly delineate the list. Plus, the US government printing office requires it, so that seems like a good enough reason to include it in sentences.

The Ignition Project: Tag accessibility

Accessibility Issues You Wouldn't Think About