An increasing number of people cannot even imagine their life without the internet today. Right from accessing news and making purchasing to checking bank transactions and studying online courses, the applications of internet are numerous.?
Every developer needs to possess the capability to understand that all of their site visitors may not be able to access the information present there unless the page has been designed and developed subsequent to taking the principles of web accessibility into consideration. ?Most newspapers today, for instance, publish their content online. But unless their website is accessible, visually impaired individuals won?t be able to understand the news.? Hence, it becomes important for developers to explore the resources offered by companies like AccessiBe and create websites that can be accessed by all.
Website accessibility matters a lot owing to a variety of reasons, but unfortunately a number of companies are still falling behind Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) conformance. But it is important to understand that accessibility benefits millions of online users, and hence it becomes extremely crucial to implement its key practices.
Here are a few accessibility facts that one must note:
- Depending on the survey a person is looking at, the number of people with disabilities in the United States ranges between 18 and 26 % of the overall population, which is greater than any ethnic group. While these numbers ideally vary from region to region, there typically are higher rates of disability in the South.
- The impact of a medical condition is not a disability. The society both enacts and enables barriers that cause people to become disabled. This makes society 100 % responsible for both the cause and solution for any disability that an individual experiences.
- No overlay or plug-in by itself can make a website WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliant. They cannot automatically fix any issue that has not been automatically detected, and does not usually work for mobile. Overlay or plug-in may also creates security and performance vulnerabilities.
- Captioning videos is one of the key aspects of making a website accessible. Hearing loss is the number one congenital disability. A person may suffer from hearing impairment due to an autoimmune condition, noise, virus, aging and more. Captions are a curb cut, and people turn on captions for other reasons besides hearing loss.
- Most screen readers, switch, as well as sip and puff assistive technology (AT) works through keyboard simulation. The action or gestures are typically interpreted by the AT, converted to a keyboard command and ultimately sent to the code to be processed. One cannot assume that all site visitors can use a keyboard.
AccessiBe is a prominent, automated web accessibility solution that is backed by artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning. It addresses a variety of accessibility concerns without the need to do manual changes or modifications in the source code. This technology comprehensively examines a page to determine the right changes necessary to meet WCAG and ADA compliance.
