Getting to know Web Accessibility

Peter Krautzberger, krautzource

Slides at https://krautzource.github.io/talks-2025-weba11y-intro/

To move through the Slides, scroll left/right.

About Peter

The bigger/smaller picture

Speaking of motivation

Hierarchy image: Guilt - Punish - Require - Reward - Enlighten - Inspire

Source: webaim

Inspiration:
Technically-oriented: Selfish Accessibility (Adrian Roselli) (note: audio gets better ~3:30min)
Content-oriented: Accessibility is usability (Sarah Richards), A11y Camp 2020

Which abilities do you use when you visit a website?

👁 Seeing
👂 Hearing
🖐 Touching
🧠 Thinking
🗣 Speaking

What if one of these is limited somehow?

👁 Seeing
👂 Hearing
🖐 Touching
🧠 Thinking
🗣 Speaking

Statistics

More than 1 in 4 (28.7%) adults in the US have some type of disability 13.9% Cognition, 12.2% Mobility, 7.7% Independent living, 6.2% Hearing, 5.5% Vision, 3.6% Self-Care

Source (with detailed text alternatives): CDC

More statistics

Disability Status by Age Group

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

We come in all shapes and sizes

Disability ≠ Personal Health Condition
Disability = Mismatched Human Interactions

A tabular with title row and columns and diagrams depicting each of the 6 terms. Title row: Permanent, Temporary, Situational. First row Touch: One arm, Arm injury, New parent. Second row See: Blind, Cataract, Distracted driver Contuing the preceding tabular with 6 additional terms. First row Hear: Deaf, Ear infection, Bartender. Second row Speak: Non-verbal, Laryngitis, Heavy accent

Source: Microsoft Inclusive Design Guidelines

Accessible vs Inclusive

Accessibility: Literally, gaining access
Inclusion: Not wishing you hadn’t

From: Heydon Pickering: accessible rick-rolling

Universal Design

Good to know: Universal Design (wikipedia).

“Universal design is design that’s usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.”–Ron Mace

Foto eines abgesängten Bordsteins Nick-philly , CC BY-SA 4.0

Getting technical

The Web Platform

The web platform is a collection of technologies.

The web is accessible by default.
If accessibility is missing, we broke it ourselves.

Laws & web accessibility

More at W3C Web Accessibility Laws & Policies
At the core: W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

The core is always WCAG, currently WCAG 2.2.

Introductory: W3C Accessibility Principles, WebAIM articles…
expert blogs: a11y-collective, smashing magazine, Stéphanie Walter…

WCAGs POUR Principles

WCAG foundation: All content has to be

for all users.

WCAG Testing

Automated

Manual testing

User testing: critical for anything complex

Avoid: Accessibility Overlays

Assistive Technologies

Output: custom display, screen magnifier, audio, braille, vibration…

Input: adaptive keyboards, mouse, joystick, trackball, switch access, braille, speech, head pointer, eye tracking, sip&puff…

array of microsoft adaptive accessories

Microsoft Adaptive Accessories

Parity is paramount

The point is not to create a better experience, or even a good experience.
It’s to ensure a comparable experience between different people.
Interfaces should not be challenging to some and not to others, but some interfaces are necessarily complex and some content is inherently esoteric. […]
These are shortcomings of inclusivity, not accessibility.

From Heydon Pickering: Priniciples of Accessibility

A day in the life …

Developing for Accessibility

Accessibility is a process for helping people.

WCAG by example - 1