Dev8D: A Guide to Accessibility with EA Draffen and Seb Skuse

Feb 15, 2012 by saldridge

EA Draffen and Seb Skuse are from the Accessibility Team at Southampton University. They’re developing software that helps developers and users make and use accessible websites. Accessibility is a much disregarded aspect of any website but one that is vital for a large percentage of users. From simply enlarging text to tabbing through pages to screenreaders, the level of accessibility of html on websites is important.

“There’s these wonderful users having problems with websites and then they’ll sit out there and not say a thing.” – EA Draffen

During the session Draffen and Skuse showed a variety of websites and where they were going wrong. The “curse of ‘click here’” should be noted: The simple act of correctly labelling links is something that is forgotten far too often.

“We’ve got to think multimedia, it’s not just screenreaders you need to worry about… it’s everybody.” – E.A. Draffen

Draffen and Skuse showed how using a Firefox add-on called WAVE, developers can check for accessibility errors on any webpage. It was interesting to note that Claroread, an accessibility company, has a notably large amount of errors and Livejournal, voted one of the best social network sites in a survey done by Southampton University) had some simple errors too.

Top Tips

Below is a round-up of tips given throughout the Dev8D session.

There are two tasks as a web developer and one of those is actually training your ‘content people’.
Just remember to put a little bit of thought in when you’re building the site.
Don’t overkill. Too many descriptions will end up being very repetitive when using a screenreader.
Make sure links are “precise and concise”.
You must enable the users to have the technology rather than forcing it upon them. If it’s truly accessible you should be easy to find the site, there should be improved statistics and your brand should build a reputation for being highly accessible.