Accessibility is not a certificate, it is four things that often go wrong

Accessibility sounds like something for specialists, with a standard and a statement and an audit to go with it. In practice it almost always comes down to four things, and you can check them on your own site in a quarter of an hour.

Contrast

Light grey text on a white background looks calm on a good screen in a dark room. On a phone in the sun it is unreadable, and for someone with less sharp eyesight it always is.

The standard asks for a ratio of 4.5 to 1 between text and background. That can be measured, and it is the only one of the four you cannot argue about.

This does not only affect people with a disability. Everyone over forty sees less contrast than ten years earlier, and everyone looking at their phone outdoors is affected by it.

Operable with a keyboard alone

Press the tab key a few times on your own site. You should jump from link to link, and you should be able to see where you are.

If the outline stays invisible, someone who cannot use a mouse cannot see where they are. If you cannot reach the menu, or cannot open a dropdown, then that part of your site is closed to that visitor.

This is not only for people with a motor impairment. Anyone with an arm temporarily in plaster is in the same position.

Headings that have only been made bigger

A screen reader does not read a page from top to bottom. It jumps from heading to heading, the way you do with your eyes when you scan.

That only works if a heading really is a heading in the code. If text has merely been made bolder and bigger, then to a screen reader it is an ordinary sentence and the structure of your page disappears completely.

This is the mistake you see least and that breaks the most.

Error messages that are just a red outline

A form that turns a field red without saying what is wrong leaves the visitor guessing. Is there an extra space in the phone number? Was the email address rejected? Does something else need filling in?

Say in plain language what is wrong, and put that text under the field it belongs to. Colour alone is never enough, because someone who is colour blind does not see that red outline.

What level AA means

WCAG is the standard referred to in the Netherlands. There are three levels: A, AA and AAA. AA is the level the legislation points to and the one everyone means when they say a site has to be accessible.

AAA is deliberately almost unreachable for an ordinary site. That is not a failure, that is how the standard was set up.

For government organisations and semi-public institutions AA is already required. For businesses it is not yet, but the European Accessibility Directive is coming and it affects online shops among others.

No, it will not make your site uglier

That is the question we get most often. The answer is no. Enough contrast and a logical structure usually make a page calmer rather than busier.

What does go is very light shades of grey and text laid over a busy photo. That is not design you lose, that is design that shuts out part of your visitors.

Read how we build an accessible website, or review an existing site.