The Alt Text Decision Tree [link]
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean text alternatives should be that long! But how do you know what’s right? This decision tree is a good place to start.
Accessibility
Text Formatting Don’ts
The way a person formats text is to communicate additional information. “This phrase is a section heading.” “This word is more important than all the others.” When text formatting gets out of control, that information is obscured and a host of other problems arise.
WordPress User Guide To Accessibility [link]
When it comes to entering accessible content, the skills required are rather simple, but many people find it hard to remember to do all of them. Here’s a great little article reminding people what those skills are. My favorite part: a simple test to see if your site is accessible.
Guest Post: An Accessible Internet, The Great Equalizer
In this guest post, web designer Erik Parkin discusses the power of the internet as a tool of empowerment and independence.
It’s ALT Good: Alternative Text & Accessibility
Writing alt text is one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to improve the accessibility (and SEO!) of your website.Yet many people still don’t do it! If you’re unclear at all about what it is, take the time now to understand it and implement it on your sites.
Think Before You Link
I don’t know that I’ll ever perfect the art of writing link text, but there are some basic patterns and word choices to avoid. This article covers how to write good link text that increases readabiliy, accesibility, and search engine rankings.
H1: Headings Are Important
Headings are easy to add to web pages and give big payoffs in readability, usability, accessibility, and search engine friendliness. If you don’t know what headings are, take the 10 minutes to learn. They’re simple. If you do know what they are, this should give you some good examples of why they matter.
PDFs on the Web (Part 1): Problems
PDFs are everywhere on the web even though they aren’t optimized for viewing in a web browser. Why? In this post, the first in a series of two, I’ll review the reasons people post PDFs and the potential pitfalls of doing so.
SEO and Accessibility: Two birds. One Stone. [link]
In writing about best practices in web design recently, I’ve really been struck by the overlap between good SEO and accessibility practices. I certainly knew many good practices in each, but the number of times I found myself saying “Do X because it benefits SEO and screen readers” was really striking. So I thought to … Continue reading “SEO and Accessibility: Two birds. One Stone. [link]”
What I Think of Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
I opened this book on a flight from Seattle to Minneapolis and was pleased to read that Steve Krug wrote Don’t Make Me Think so it could be read from cover-to-cover on an airplane! It’s true and it was awesome. Let me highlight the most important ideas I took from this website usability classic.
Accessibility Is Important Because Other People Are Important
I used to have a long drawn-out explanation for the importance of accessibility. No more! Read my new argument courtesy of Steve Krug’s classic book, Don’t Make Me Think.
Reconsidering the Slider
The slider isn’t just a small hamburger, it’s a rampantly-popular way of showcasing content on a website, and it’s one that sometimes gets used with little thought toward effectiveness.While I still believe there are a few instances where it’s appropriate, I think we all could afford to slow down, take a deep breath, and think about what we’re doing with sliders on our websites.
Make Websites Accessible for Visitors You’ve Never Met [link]
This article is almost a manifesto for the various principles of inclusion, universal design, and accessibility, topics I recently blogged about. It’s very short and geared toward web designers, but anyone who uses the web at work would benefit from reading this. Plus, it’s in a fun statement/response format! Luckily for us, web designers are … Continue reading “Make Websites Accessible for Visitors You’ve Never Met [link]”
Privilege & Web Design: Putting the Web And Accessibility in Perspective
On the internet, websites are used in many ways and by many people that web designers may have never considered. In order to build a website that is accessible everywhere to everyone, it’s important to think about some of the privileges that many web designers share. In this post, I’ll share some common privileges and recommendations for best practices to keep in mind.