Accessibility

This week in lab we finished up coding. It was pretty cool by the end because I was able to create a little website using only text and symbols. This week we are talking about accessibility. We were required to read the following:

• http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
• http://wearecolorblind.com/examples
• https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/photosensitive-epilepsy/web-design

The readings really helped me to understand accessibility and come up with a way for me to make my website more accessible for all people. People with websites should make them more accessible because “The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture, location, or physical or mental ability. When the Web meets this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability” (http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility).

For my site, I plan on having keyboard input so that people with limited motor control can access my site with limited to no use of the mouse. I will also try to use color schemes that are easy for people with colorblindness to see. Wearecolorblind (http://wearecolorblind.com/examples) provides excellent examples of what colors work together for colorblind people and what colors don’t. I plan on using the site to make sure I don’t use any of the “bad” example color schemes.

Another thing I have to be careful of is not triggering epileptic seizures. My site can’t “Contain anything that flashes more than three times in any one second period or flash below the general flash and red flash thresholds” (https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/photosensitive-epilepsy/web-design). My site will not contain anything that flashes or blinks. Epilepsy.org also provides many other examples of how to make your site more accessible for people for epilepsy.

For some reason, I can’t seem to think of another example of access or accessibility that wasn’t discussed in our module, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t more. It means that I have to do more research to make sure that I make my site accessible to anyone who wants to visit it.