Web Accessibility – Did You Know?

A very common accessibility problem is the lack of properly formatted Heading tags in a webpage (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 or H6). Sometimes headings are not present or they may be incorrectly nested (ie… H2 before H1, H3 before H2 etc…). Headings communicate the organization of the content on the page and can be…

All web pages must have complete start and end tags, be nested according to their specifications, not contain duplicate attributes, and IDs must be unique. To ensure ADA compliance, use our free html validation plugin to identify and correct validation errors in your pages. The pro extension may be used to correct many of HTML…

Animated gifs that repeat non-stop or more than 3 times in one second should be avoided. To ensure compliance, animated images should stop after 5 seconds or users should be given a way to pause. They must also include alt text and if they contain blinking or flashing they should not flash more than 3…

If any audio plays automatically for more than 3 seconds, either a mechanism must be available at the top of the page to pause or stop the audio, or a mechanism must be available to control audio volume independently from the overall system volume level. Reference:  WCAG 2.1 (Level A) – 1.4.2 

The main content is not usually the first thing on a webpage. This makes it difficult for screen reader users to locate the actual content. Skip links are used on websites to address this problem. These special links are placed at the top of each page to bypass navigation blocks and other decorative content. A…

Users are accustomed to using a variety of methods of finding content on websites. Many users prefer search, others prefer navigation menus, and some prefer to use a sitemap. For some users the choice might be determined by a particular feature’s ease of use. For example, users with disabilities might find it easier to use…

Alternate text, also called alt tags and alt descriptions, describes images to visually impaired users. Without alternative text, the content of an image will not be available to screen reader users. Each image that conveys meaning or is used as link content must include alternate text unless including the alternate text would create redundancy (e.g.…

While it is a common practice to open external links in a new window it should never be done without first notifying the user.  There are many ways to notify your users. You can add a notice such as (opens in a new window) to the link text or the title attribute. CSS may be…