Week 5 - Accessibility

Yesterday we had an insteresting talk about accessibitly and how one can improve when creating a website so that the website will not be for one type of audience only, but for various audiences.

What is Web Accessibility?

Web accessibility means that people with special needs can understand, navigate and interact with the web.

Making your web site accessible

• Use the 'alt' attribute in images
• Descriptions of video and captioning of audio
• Headings and lists
• Use the 'longdesc' attribute on graphs and charts
• Instead of writing "click here" use text that makes sense
• Use signs inside a button
• Minimize the amount of flash and javascript.  Also, if you have animation, include a stop button.
• Allow the user to choose the font size of text
• Use less contrast colours

When I designed websites, I always tested the websites using validators and different web browsers but I never thought that there might be visitors that can see the website differently (as in colors).  Now that I know about this, I tested one my websites using a colour blind filter

Normal

Protanopia Vision: unable to receive color red

Deuteranopia Vision: unable to receive color green

 Tritanopia Vision: unable to receive color blue

When I saw this, I was abit surprised; I knew that in color blindness people look at the color differently but I did not know how.

That's it for this week!!