I made a conscious effort to utilize WCAG 2.1 in the construction of this site.
What does this mean? WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Web sites that follow the WCAG are accessible to assistive technologies that bridge the gap between content and disabled viewers. Any site that follows WCAG can be read out loud to viewers who are vision impaired, and can be navigated by physically handicapped people who use sip and puff devices, or are limited to using just the tab and enter keys on their keyboard.
How does the WCAG affect this site's design? The full range of design considerations is more than I can explain here. But, listed below are a few of the more distinctive style and content attributes you will see on this site.
- All images include thorough text based descriptions that can be accessed by assistive technologies like screen readers, or brail readers.
- All pages can be navigated with the tab and enter key, as well as by sip and puff systems.
- Typography size and color are measured against WCAG guidelines to ensure adequate contrast is present. This allows viewers with low vision to see text more clearly.
- I have avoided the use of animation as this can be problematic for people with motion induced illness. This is why my site does not make use of a slide show on the home page.
- All pages include headlines that are coded in a way that makes it possible for screen readers to pick out the overall meaning of a page.
- Content is arranged into logical groups that allow efficient navigation without requiring the use of a mouse.
Why did I follow WCAG principals? First of all it is the right thing to do, but there is much more to it than that. When I studied the WCAG principals it occurred to me that they were actually best practices in general. Site content that is WCAG compatible is also semantically ideal for search engine optimization. If devices like Amazon's Alexa are any indication of things to come, the WCAG principals may become the gold standard of the future.
Where can I see all of the WCAG 2.1 principals? Click Here