Building for the World

2018-10-08
2 min read

Did you know the world has 15% of its inhabitants being disabled and that 2-4% of the 15% have significantly high levels in functioning? 15% here amounts to 1,080,000,000 The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone, regardless of disability is an essential aspect. - Tim Berners -Lee The Web is thus fundamentally designed for use, by the masses whatever their software, hardware, language or location. Nothing should hinder persons with disabilities from using the Web.

Unfortunately, the webs universality ends with the remaining 75% of the world’s inhabitants.

I styled my title to remove the notion that building/developing for the world wide web with people living with disabilities in mind, sidelines normal functioning individuals. Building with disabilities in mind, is a merit to those living without.

Increase in speed {load times of websites} | Clear and Concise text with a focus on context are some of the advantages when developers build with disabilities in mind. These are positives for everyone concerned.

How do we do this?

Designing for the Web

  • Provide sufficient contrast between foreground and background
  • Do not use colour alone to convey information
  • Ensure forms have clear and concise corresponding labels
  • Provide identifiable feedback

Writing for the Web

  • Provide informative unique page titles
  • Make link text meaningful
  • Write meaningful text alternatives for images
  • Create transcripts and captions for multimedia. Eg. Audio only content - podcast (transcripts)Video , Training Videos - (caption)

Developing for the Web

  • Use Markup to convey meaning and structure
  • Associate a label with every form control
  • Include alternative text for images
  • Write code that adapts to users technology. {be responsive}
  • Avoid CAPTCHA’s where possible Eg.Not requiring captures for authenticated users, Provide more than two ways to solve CAPTCHA’s

This list is definitely not exhaustive, there are a lot more things that can be done to make the web more accessible to the world.

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