Proper websites, done properly

Accessibility isn't optional

2 minute read time / 291 words

Words to always remember. Whether you want to or not, you've got no choice but to do it.

I recently gave a talk at the Halifax Digital Festival that I'd not done for a while so it was almost like a first presentation all over again. It reminded me that there are still so many people who don't know about accessibility and should, and if they know about it don't understand that fundamentally they have no choice but to ensure their sites, apps and services are accessible.

I've been doing talks about accessibility for a few years now and it's evolved quite a bit as new things have come along, like Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorythm (APCA) - whereby colour contrast takes into account not only the foreground and background colours, but also the font size and weight too. Not only that, in WCAG2 you would get the same colour contrast with light text on a dark background as you would dark text on a light background. Not any more! This is really important for people to know about!

That being said, parts of the presentation are (ironically, and purposely) inaccessible. There's some slides with a lot of animation, and some colour combinations put there to really make people try harder to see things. It's all part of the gentle introduction to all the things many people have never had to worry about - or at least thought they didn't need to worry about it.

In the spirit of sharing (and making things available to people in more than one format where possible and feasible!) - I've started making a web-based version of the slides. They'll be rough around the edges for now, but it'll be an ongoing project to improve continuously!