All Things Web

In this, the second lesson of our Web Accessibility Basics series, we’ll discuss What Makes Your Web Site Accessible. This discussion will include some basic items that will improve the overall accessibility of your web site, and we’ll include a link to a list of 10 things you can do to your web site to make it accessible from the WAI.

While there are tons of items that help make a web site accessible, we’ll focus on three key items in this article.

1. Well organized Semantic Layout
2. Text Based Navigation with section ID’s.
3. Alt Tags and Title Tags for Images and Links

1. Well Organized Semantic Page Layout
One of the easiest ways to improve your web sites accessibility is to organize the content in a well structured layout. By using the generally accepted global structure as proposed by the W3C you can ensure that your document will be organized properly and be easily disected by your visitors. We encourage the use of valid HTML and CSS as your core.

Then combining Header Tags and paragraphs along with well defined sections is your great .

2. Text Based Navigation with Section ID’s
After developing your core structure, you need to incorporate text based navigation at the beginning of your document allowing your visitors to skip to the core sections of your page identified by ID’s. At a minimum you should have three key sections to your page, Main Navigation, Secondary Navigation and Main Content. This ads a main layer of general accessibility to your site.

3. Alt Tags and Title Tags for Images and Links
Text based document readers, and aural readers are unable to disect information from images. It is very important that any image has an ALT tag to describe the information the image is being used to display. Along with your ALT tags, all of your text based links should include “titles” that describe the information you are linking to.

While this is a very limited discussion on web accessibility, these concepts are solid foundations to turning your web site into a fully accessible one.