Ignore Accessibility At Your Own Peril.
Tags: webdev, a11y, testing
Published: 2023-02-08 17:08:44

Let me start by saying that **every website should be accessible to those with disabilities**. Whether it's blindness, color blindness, sensitivity to moving images, or anything else - we should be trying our best to make the sites we work on, work for everyone. 

I think there have been great strides made over the past many years in trying to promote the importance of accessibility on the web. There is _still_ a lot of work to be done, but for many organizations there are at least some basic practices that are taking place. 

Probably the most common of these are:

- ensuring sites are keyboard accessible
- adding alt text for images
- adding document language 
- adding ARIA labels and tab 
- better link descriptions (no 'click here')
- checking for text contrast
- more accessible forms
 
Of course, if you only focused on those items, you're likely missing other issues. Such as:

- visible focus elements for keyboard users
- accessible dropdown lists and calendar date pickers
- disabling animations
- PDF accessibility
- and dozens more...

Realistically, most businesses do not have the resources to ensure their sites are 100% accessible. And because an ADA lawsuit can cost a business up to $55,000 for the first offense and $110,000 for subsequent offences, you also can't just ignore accessibility.

And the number of lawsuits is increasing every year. 
In 2020, there were 2,523 federal lawsuits. 
In 2021, 2,895. 
In 2022: 3,255.  

If you're offering any kind of business service or educational content, please don't think that you're safe just because you haven't been one of those lucky recipients. 

If you use a third party platform such as wordpress or shopify, you may think that the onus is on that company to offer an accessible storefront. And you would be right to a certain degree. But once you start adding non-accessible pdfs or change color styles, etc., you are now responsible for those accessibility issues.

In previous years, many ecommerce sites would offer up product specification sheets and user guides to provide more detailed information to their end users. But we're starting to see those disappear. Check B&H photo, CDW, Crutchfield, or many other sites and you'll notice these pdfs no longer exist. 


![Based on a national sample, displays three bar graphs that illustrate institutional discrimination and predatory lending for house loans](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3pdeelhv7e2wxxas9fgn.jpg)

PDFs in particular are a very tricky beast - you may THINK that tagging this image as 'chart of predatory lending' would be totally fine. You would be wrong. 

A more appropriate alt tag would be: 

_Based on a national sample, displays three bar graphs that illustrate institutional discrimination and predatory lending for house loans._

If you're not putting this kind of time into your alt tags, what else might you be missing? I would also venture to guess that more than 90% of businesses have zero idea how their sites function with a screen reader. 

On the flip side, affected users often state that accessibility options are readily available and cost-effective, so there is no real reason why a website _shouldn't_ be completely accessible. 

I don't presume to have a solution for making accessible websites easier. Is the ideal situation that we have a static html page with no styles like back in the early days of the web? Or should website owners just 'suck it up' and pay for a dedicated accessibility expert or firm who will monitor their sites for issues?  **Please let me know your thoughts in the comments. **

In the meantime, here are a few links if you're just not sure where to start with accessibility. 

- [WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/)
- [Diagram Center](http://diagramcenter.org/accessible-image-sample-book/table-of-contents.html)
- [NVDA Free Screen Reader (windows)](https://www.nvaccess.org/download/)
- [VoiceOver - Built-in Screen Reader for Mac OS](https://www.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/_1121.html)
- [WAVE evaluation tool](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-tool/jbbplnpkjmmeebjpijfedlgcdilocofh)
- [axe DevTools for web accessibility testing](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/axe-devtools-web-accessib/lhdoppojpmngadmnindnejefpokejbdd?utm_source=deque.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=axe_hero)