When writing alt text, focus on what is actually in the image. Any relevant information that isn't describing the image itself should be in a caption below the image, not in the alt text. This includes photo credits, permissions, and copyright information.
Accessibility awareness and training are good first steps, but they aren't the end. Teams need to create accessibility policies and strategies based on that training and newfound knowledge. Managers must empower people to enforce policies to make sure everyone does their part.
Don't use color alone to convey information. Marking required fields by only using colored labels won't help people who use screen readers or who can't distinguish colors. If using color, also add text like asterisks and/or "required."
www.w3.org/WAI/tips/des...
When creating PDFs, avoid using "Print to PDF." A screen reader user may still be able to access the text of PDFs created this way, but heading structure, alternative text, and any other tag structure will be lost. Using "Save As" or "Export" can preserve these tags.
Capitalization affects how people read hashtags or how people hear them on screen readers. Use #camelCase or #PascalCase in hashtags instead of lowercase. You could have #DoctorWhoRewatch ("Doctor Who Rewatch") or #doctorwhorewatch ("doctor whore watch.")
Screen reader users can navigate from heading to heading. If HTML headings are used correctly, this allows users to get a basic outline of content and find the information they’re looking for. The highest heading level is <h1> and <h6> is the lowest.
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...
People have personal preferences on what they consider acceptable length for alt text, but there's no definitive character limit or formula for how long alt text should be. That said, aim to be as detailed as needed but as succinct as possible. Go for both accuracy and precision.
Glad to be of help and service, Joanne!
Everyone who works on a website has a role to ensure the site and its content are accessible. This resource from Vox Media breaks down some accessibility tasks by job role, including content creators, designers, developers, project managers, and testers.
accessibility.voxmedia.com
Audio descriptions are necessary for making videos accessible. They narrate the crucial visual elements that would be necessary for understanding the plot without the ability to see the screen. They describe non-verbal cues like gestures, facial expressions, or eye contact.
Avoid jargon when possible. Use language you know your audience will know. This will vary by audience. For certain audiences, terms like "pedagogy," "praxis," or "dramaturgy" might make sense, but these terms aren't necessarily intuitive for more general audiences.
Screen reader users going through a PowerPoint presentation might quickly scan through a list of slide titles and go right to the slide they want. Avoid repeating slide titles. Instead, use unique slide titles so users can clearly understand which slide they are on currently.
Automatically updating content can be extremely distracting, especially for users with vestibular disorders or attention difficulties. This could force users to scroll through page content to not see the animation, or to just look away. Allow animations to be paused or stopped.
Sighted users often use bold or large fonts to create the appearance of headings in documents. People using screen readers have no way of understanding these visual cues. Use heading styles from the styles menu to correctly format headings.
Alt text always depends on context. Imagine an icon of a computer printer. It could be used on a page of free icons. It could be on a school's computer lab site. Or it could be part of a button that allows you to print the current page. In each instance, the same icon would need different alt text.
To reduce the cognitive load in data visualizations, directly label your data rather than using legends. This helps colorblind or visually impaired users. It also decreases the work of scanning back and forth trying to match the legend with the data.
Ensure text is readable in data visualizations and information graphics. Small text is generally harder to read, and should be avoided where possible. Make sure the text is not obstructed by other chart elements, and has sufficient contrast against its background.
Alexa Heinrich's Accessible Social is a free resource for digital marketers, communication professionals, content creators, everyday social media users, and anyone who wants to learn how to make their content accessible for people with disabilities.
www.accessible-social.com
Don't forget transcripts for video and audio. These will help blind users and low-vision users, deaf and hard-of-hearing users, people with ADHD, and people with audio-processing disorders. Transcripts also benefit search engines, people in quiet spaces, and people in a hurry.
To avoid being censored by social media platforms, some people intentionally misspell words or replace letters with symbols or numbers. This causes confusion and problems for screen reader users, people with cognitive and reading disabilities, and people learning the language.
Templates could be designed and coded according to web accessibility standards, but this won't ensure that the final product would be accessible. Content creators still need to know about key accessibility concepts, including alt text, link text, and proper headings.
Automated captions and transcripts can save time so that you don't have to manually transcribe on your own. But automated captions and transcripts aren't 100% accurate, so they need manual editing before you publish them.
www.w3.org/WAI/media/av...
"Learn Accessibility" is a course that takes you through the essentials for building accessible websites and web apps. Created for both beginners and advanced users, this course can be taken beginning to end, or used as a reference for specific topics.
web.dev/learn/access...
When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.
Some people have disabilities that are directly based on the way they understand and interpret numbers. In this post, Ricky Onsman explains some of these disabilities, who is affects and how, and what web creators can do about it.
www.tpgi.com/making-numbe...
An emoji has a coded description that gets read aloud by screen readers. Putting emoji in between text could cause confusion or make content less clear. It's best to put emoji at the end of written content.
People often have difficulty reading content when there isn’t sufficient contrast, so it's important to have high color contrast. TPGi’s free color contrast checker tool allows you to determine the contrast ratio of two colors by using an eye-drop tool.
developer.paciellogroup.com/color-contra...
Automated tools and software can be a great starting point to check the accessibility of a site. They are able to find certain errors quickly. They can't find every accessibility error, though. A combination of automated tools and human manual testing is the most robust approach.
In hashtags, it helps if each new word starts with a capital letter. Otherwise, sighted users could see a string of letters and not immediately know where one word ends and a new word begins. Capitalized words also help screen readers properly read out the hashtag.
If you're looking to hire people with accessibility knowledge and experience, the Accessibility Skills Hiring Toolkit created by Teach Access can help you. The toolkit provides language to use when writing job ads, and questions to ask when interviewing.
teachaccess.github.io/accessibilit...