Accessibility
Sites everyone can use: WCAG, screen readers, contrast, keyboards and motion.
Accessible forms
Accessible forms give every field a visible label, explain errors in text next to the field, and work fully with the keyboard and screen readers.
ADA website compliance
ADA website compliance refers to making a site accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act, typically assessed against WCAG AA in practice.
ARIA
ARIA is a set of HTML attributes that describe roles, states and labels to assistive technology when native HTML elements cannot express them.
Captions and transcripts
Captions display spoken words and important sounds as text in video; transcripts provide the full text separately, for people who are deaf, hard of hearing or watching muted.
Colour contrast
Colour contrast is the difference in brightness between text and its background; WCAG AA asks for at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text.
Focus state
The focus state is the visible outline that shows which element the keyboard is on; removing it without a replacement makes a site unusable by keyboard.
Keyboard navigation
Keyboard navigation means every link, button, menu and form on a page can be reached and used with the keyboard alone, in a logical order.
Reduced motion
Reduced motion is a device setting people turn on when animation makes them dizzy or distracted; sites should honour it by toning down or removing non-essential motion.
Screen reader
A screen reader is software that reads a page aloud or outputs it to braille, letting blind and low-vision people navigate by headings, links and landmarks.
Skip link
A skip link is a link at the very top of a page, usually visible on keyboard focus, that jumps straight to the main content past repeated navigation.
WCAG
WCAG is the international standard for web accessibility from the W3C, organised around four principles (perceivable, operable, understandable, robust) with levels A, AA and AAA.
Web accessibility
Web accessibility means building sites everyone can use, including people who are blind, deaf, have limited movement or cognitive differences, whatever device or assistive technology they use.