Why Learn Web Accessibility?

There are many people in the world and considerations must be made to make content accessible. A few guiding principles should help unravel the how and the why of accessibility. Other videos @ http://teamtreehouse.com

Like Us on Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/TeamTreeHouse

Follow Us on Twitter- http://www.twitter.com/treehouse

[♪♪]

You may have heard of
accessibility in the past

or maybe you heard somewhere
that your website should be accessible,

but what does that even mean?

The idea of anyone being able
to use a website sounds simple enough,

but it's more nuanced than that.

There are lots of people in the world,

and there's many considerations to be made.

In general though,

there is one guiding principle
that should make accessibility

a lot easier
for anyone to understand.

Web standards and best practices
tend to lead towards more accessible websites

and vice versa.

Designing a website to be
accessible tends to lead you

towards web standards
and best practices.

For example, screen reading software
that assists users with visual impairments

can sometimes have difficulty
when tables are used for layout

rather than being used
for tabular data.

There are many different types
of impairments that encompass

vision, hearing, motor skills, and more.

We'll learn about
specific techniques to accommodate

all these different types of users.

Before we get into
the technical details,

let's back up because sometimes
web developers and designers wonder

why they should be so concerned
with accessibility in the first place.

There are numerous reasons,

but here are three
really important ones.

First and most importantly,
it's just the right thing to do.

The web represents
a giant leap forward in the quality of life

for people with disabilities.

For example, before the advent
of online news and screen readers,

it was difficult, expensive,
and oftentimes impossible

for a person with visual impairments
to read a daily newspaper.

That alone should be reason enough.

Second, as I mentioned earlier,

building accessible websites
has a tendency to lead towards HTML markup

that is semantic and easy for everyone,
even computers, to understand and interpret.

Every designer and developer
should understand the importance of this.

Lastly, you can get into trouble legally
if you're not careful.

Many countries have laws
that require government agencies

along with public and private organizations
to maintain web content

that is accessible to people
of all abilities and disabilities.

In the year 2000,
a blind Australian man engaged in a court case

against the Sydney organizing committee
of the Olympic Games,

and he won the case because,
under the Australian Disability Discrimination Act of 1992,

the official website
of the Sydney Olympic Games

failed to provide
adequate accessibility to blind users.

Legal disputes of this nature
can be extremely costly,

but they're also so easily avoidable
by simply providing accessible content.

As we'll learn,
it's not as difficult as it might seem.

Whether you're creating a new website
or even if you're updating an old one,

you should familiarize yourself
with the local and federal laws

that the website
will be subjected to.

Here are a few documents
to help you get started.

The World Wide Web Consortium,
or W3C for short,

is an organization that sets the rules
for HTML, CSS, and many other standards.

A W3C project known as
the Web Accessibility Initiative, or WAI,

published the first version of the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, in 1999.

Since then
and especially in recent years,

it has been accepted as the gold standard
for creating accessible websites.

By the end of 2008,

the WCAG 2.0 had been released
by the WC3 as a recommendation.

I highly recommend that you take a look
at this document and read it over.

It is lengthy,

and we cover quite a bit
of the information it contains.

But even so,
you should at least look at it for reference.

In 1998, the United States Congress amended
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973

to include Section 508
which requires federal agencies

to make electronic information accessible
to people with disabilities.

The portions regarding web technology

are based on the guidelines developed
by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C,

and this is also the case for laws
and regulations around the world.

In the UK, for instance,

the Publicly Available Specification,
or PAS 78, published in 2006

also references the WAI guidelines.

This is also true in Canada, Spain, Japan,
and many other countries.

But even so, you should
study the laws that are local to your country

and strive to comply with them.

Accessibility might seem
difficult or confusing right now,

but we'll go through everything
one step at a time.

[♪♪]