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Accessibility (a11y) is an interesting and exciting topic, but it's exhausting to see yet another SEO guy to add his two cents about it. From a technical point

by zichy 9y ago

Accessibility (a11y) is an interesting and exciting topic, but it's exhausting to see yet another SEO guy to add his two cents about it. From a technical point of view, web a11y is almost exclusively about semantics or machine readability. There are two kinds of machines: web crawlers and screen readers for visually impaired humans. For whom would you like to work? You are not magically improving a11y by doing good SEO, you are magically improving SEO by doing good a11y. Stop listening to SEO consultants. Build good websites. Recommendable a11y resources include the A11Y Project[1], WebAIM[2], the W3C[3], and GOV.UK[4]. The WAVE tool[5] and the Vox Media accessibility guidelines[6] are also really helpful. -- [1] http://a11yproject.com http://a11yproject.com [2] http://webaim.org/intro/ http://webaim.org/intro/ [3] https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/intro.html https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/intro.html [4] https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk [5] http://wave.webaim.org http://wave.webaim.org [6] http://accessibility.voxmedia.com http://accessibility.voxmedia.com

calibas 9y ago
The US government also put out a set of accessibility guidelines: https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm I've had a couple US clients specifically request "ADA compliance".
- zichy 9y ago
  In Germany it's the BITV: http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/bitv/bitv-2.0.html http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/bitv/bitv-2.0.html
- wyldfire 9y ago
  Is there a verifier/validator that will flag misuses/non compliance? Even if it's an incomplete set of misuses, it would still be useful.
  - legostormtroopr 9y ago
    I built a tool that does just this. Its a CLI tool that inspects HTML pages and determines if it meets a limited number of WCAG checks. https://github.com/data61/wcag-zoo https://github.com/data61/wcag-zoo Here is an ASCIInema that shows how it works (which I should embed in the readme) https://asciinema.org/a/104903 https://asciinema.org/a/104903 It was mostly build so I could add it to my CI builds to check WCAG compliance and stop deploys that didn't meet it.
    - wyldfire 9y ago
      Thanks, this looks really useful. My $.02 from an uneducated view on this topic is that it would be nice to be able to have a mode to "test the whole zoo" or "the whole zoo, excluding: '...' ". The zoo metaphor is a little odd btw.

by zichy 9y ago

calibas 9y ago

The US government also put out a set of accessibility guidelines: https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm I've had a couple US clients specifically request "ADA compliance".

zichy 9y ago
In Germany it's the BITV: http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/bitv/bitv-2.0.html http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/bitv/bitv-2.0.html
wyldfire 9y ago
Is there a verifier/validator that will flag misuses/non compliance? Even if it's an incomplete set of misuses, it would still be useful.
- legostormtroopr 9y ago
  I built a tool that does just this. Its a CLI tool that inspects HTML pages and determines if it meets a limited number of WCAG checks. https://github.com/data61/wcag-zoo https://github.com/data61/wcag-zoo Here is an ASCIInema that shows how it works (which I should embed in the readme) https://asciinema.org/a/104903 https://asciinema.org/a/104903 It was mostly build so I could add it to my CI builds to check WCAG compliance and stop deploys that didn't meet it.
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    Thanks, this looks really useful. My $.02 from an uneducated view on this topic is that it would be nice to be able to have a mode to "test the whole zoo" or "the whole zoo, excluding: '...' ". The zoo metaphor is a little odd btw.