As users and content creators we have a habit of thinking mostly about people who have similar capabilities and needs as our own.  It’s easy to forget that the web has become the most important means of sharing information for people across a wide spectrum of ability and capability, and our efforts to make our content accessible will go a long way to make what we have to offer available to a broader audience.

And It’s The Law

Since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, accessibility has become a critical consideration for all kinds of organizations and agencies. While it was initially focused on physical space, it has been updated and tested in the courts to hold organizations accountable for the accessibility of their online offerings as well.

This course isn’t going to provide much background in the legal underpinnings of Accessibility.  It’s enough to understand that these guidelines are what we need to do as we create web content to comply with federal standards.

WCAG 2.0

The Web Consortium Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, are a set of web standards written by a global consortium of web development leaders. These standards, while not a product of a federal agency, have become so influential that most government standards simply require that agencies and organizations comply with WCAG’s standards. It’s not necessary for you as a user to digest the complete WCAG — this course won’t address every single part of those guidelines, but it will give you a foundation in the sorts of content you’ll be creating and the considerations you are most likely to face.

What’s more important, really, is to have a clear understanding of the sorts of users we must try to make sure can access our content, and how we can adapt our processes and content to meet their needs as well as we do the needs of typical users.

Provide a Complete Experience

Our goal, as we set out to create web content, is to focus on using the HTML tools we have and develop some new habits that will ensure that our users have a complete, effective experience with our web-based content — one where they can be confident that they have received and understood the important information on our page.

Anything short of that is unacceptable.