Common Mistakes of Web Accessibility

Accessibility is often seen as a last thing to be concern when creating a website. In fact you can never create a successful web content without considering Web Accessibility. When a little attention is paid towards Web Accessibility many mistakes occur.  The Most common mistake made in Web Accessibility is failure to understanding what makes accessible content. To avoid web accessibility errors you should always remember one fundamental of Web Accessibility: What you see is not what you get. 

Compiling to Web Accessibilities guidelines does not only improve the visibility of website but also improves Public Relation and reduces the risks of legal actions since Web Accessibilities Polices are in action. As Web Accessibility focuses on creating the website flexible in order to meet different needs of users, it broadens the audience reach that increases the traffic to website. To learn more about Web Accessibility Techniques Visit Mariam Begum Web Development Guide.

In order to avoid Web Accessibility errors follow guideline provided below:

Inappropriate ALT attribute:   Web developers often insert long description of image, assuming that it will help screen reader users. But Alt text should always be short and concise. Always avoid inserting Alt text for decorative images so they are ignored by screen reader. As unnecessary Alt text can confuse screen reader users to work through pages. 

Click here- Never use Click here as link text as this doesn’t tells anything users about the link. Rather use a short but meaning text in order to give better understanding of what the link is about and also to ignore having unnecessary text in content.

Too Low Contrast- the contrast between background and text is an important factor to the readability of website. Therefore, always ensure good colour contrast is used and avoid using very similar colour for background and text for example background: dark grey and text colour: light gray.

Tables for Data- when tables are used to display data always give summary at the start of table. In order to aid screen reader users understand how table is related with content and relationship between cells. Always use CAPTION attribute to explain the nature of table.

Table for Layout- Never use table for layout rather use CSS Style sheet to style website content. Tables make it very complicate for screen readers to understand the page content. The tables are harder to maintain and also can bring search engine optimisation issues.

Tip- Use W3C Validator today to solve any Web Accessibility issues.