There is no excuse to not start improving accessibility
Tags: a11y
Published: 2024-06-26 06:31:37

In my three years of working on accessibility as a front-end developer I have heard quite a few misconceptions about accessibility: “Improving accessibility is the developers' responsibility”, “It costs a lot of time and effort to improve accessibility” or “Accessibility is not a top priority because not a lot of disabled people use my website”. This post is about giving a small introduction about accessibility and some helpful steps that can be taken by anyone (yes, anyone and not just software developers) to improve the accessibility of your pages!

The goal of accessibility is to have a website that is usable by anyone. The first thought most people have is that disabled people need to be able to use a website, and blind people are often the first thought of example. But not just blind people have trouble navigating a website. Imagine breaking an arm and not being able to use a keyboard or mouse. What if you are color blind and cannot see a specific color? Or if someone has a cognitive disability, will they understand what is shown? It’s all about understanding what is happening on your website and making sure all visitors understand as well.

## So now it is time to get started with improving accessibility!

First it will be a good idea to read the guidelines that are globally in place. On the website of [w3](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/) you can find the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and read up on information about accessibility.

Now, in improving there are three steps to take: identify, prioritize and fix accessibility issues. The identify step can be done by anyone who can spend time on it. The prioritize step should be done by the Product Owner or Manager of the team that will fix the issue. For the fix step you will need a front-end software developer and sometimes a UX-designer. The identify step is the step that takes the most time in the process.

To identify accessibility issues, the best way is to test your website with automated and manual testing methods. You can start with an automated tool to scan your webpage for common issues like missing labels, contrast or broken links. The w3 website has a dedicated page with a [list of tools](https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/tools/list/) that are tested by many and found to be the best to use. I can personally recommend Wave or the aXe tools, which you can find in the list of tools on the w3 website, or Lighthouse, which is a built-in tool for Google Chrome.

The more difficult task is the manual testing, which is needed to check for more complex accessibility issues or issues that cannot be found by automated tools. These tests include keyboard accessibility, screen reader compatibility or readability. Keep in mind when testing with these assistive technologies that anything you hear or see on your screen must be logical and should make sense to users. It is all about getting into the heads of your users and seeing how they use the technologies to understand the website. If you have trouble identifying issues this way, the best tip I can give you is to ask users of your website and let them show you where they run into issues. There are also people you can ask with different disabilities to test your website and share their insights with you. I would recommend inviting or speaking to one of these users at least once. If you have trouble finding these users, there are multiple companies that specialize in accessibility and would be able to set up a meeting for you.

After identifying the issues, the next step is to prioritize them so they can be picked up by the corresponding team to fix them. In my experience the best way to approach this is to split up the identified problems into small pieces and schedule to pick up at least one piece every sprint (if you are working with Scrum) or every few other tasks. Most fixes require small changes like adding html labels to existing elements, adding or changing the tab index of elements, rewriting texts or changing some colors to improve contrast. In case a bigger UI change is needed where multiple elements need to be moved or replaced, treat it like any other big improvements.

As you can see, anyone can contribute to finding accessibility issues. What will take the most time is the manual testing: choose your assistive technology and start testing to identify how to make your website more understandable. There is no excuse not to start today with the road to your accessibility improvements!