Accessibility Awareness
Accessibility AwarenessVestibular disorders affect people's balance as well as their visual perception of their world around them. Don't make animations, sliders, videos, or rapid movement start automatically, as autoplaying elements could trigger a bad reaction in people who have vestibular disorders.
Accessibility AwarenessAutomatically updating content can be extremely distracting, especially for users with vestibular disorders or attention difficulties. This could force users to scroll through page content to not see the animation, or to just look away. Allow animations to be paused or stopped.
Accessibility AwarenessA transcript is the only way to make video or audio content accessible to someone who is both deaf and blind. Transcripts can be converted into braille, to be read on a refreshable braille output device.
Accessibility AwarenessPeople who want to make the web accessible need to understand the many different ways that people with disabilities use the web. This W3C resource offers a good introduction to how disabled people navigate the web, and barriers they commonly encounter.
https://www.w3.org/WAI/people-use-web/
Accessibility AwarenessVestibular disorders affect people's balance as well as their visual perception of their world around them. Don't make animations, sliders, videos, or rapid movement start automatically, as autoplaying elements could trigger a bad reaction in people who have vestibular disorders.
Accessibility AwarenessConsider your site content that is routinely updated, like weather maps, Covid charts, or stock graphs. Screen reader users encounter maps and charts where the image has been updated but the alt text hasn't. This can lead to confusion. Always update alt text when updating images.
Accessibility AwarenessIf a word has some letters replaced with asterisks, this could confuse people. This includes people with cognitive and reading disabilities, and those learning the language. Screen reader users won't necessarily know what the word is meant to be, as it could sound like gibberish.
Accessibility AwarenessAutomatic captions make it difficult to watch videos because the viewer is forced to decipher misspelled or mistranslated words that appear in a string of text without any punctuation. These can be distracting and disorienting. Always edit your captions before publishing.
Accessibility AwarenessDon't write generic descriptions for alt text. "Screenshot of a news article" might technically be what the image is, but it does nothing to convey the information or context sighted users get from the image. People who can't see the image need the same information and context.
Accessibility AwarenessHyperlink text should make sense when read out of context. Screen reader users can navigate from link to link, and can listen to links in a list. When navigating this way, only the link is read. So "click here" or "read more" won't make sense.