4 Best Online and Free Accessibility Tools
The word accessibility has become somewhat of a buzzword these days. However, many of us are still guilty of leaving this part until the last minute. We need to start design in the beginning!
In this post, I will share four tools you can use to become familiar with accessibility standards and access the websites and applications you have already created.
This is the first post in a series about accessibility.
Where do we begin? To design accessible applications, we need to ask ourselves what accessibility is! Long story short, accessibility is empathy. Sometimes, we find it difficult to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. In my experience, going out and getting to know the users has been the most useful way to gain this insight. Get curious about others who understand the world differently than yourself. This way, we gain empathy and become better designers or developers.
A quote I found that covers what it means to be accessible is as follows:
"The principles of good human-to-computer interface design are simplicity, support, clarity, encouragement, satisfaction, accessibility, versatility, and personalization. While it’s essential to heed these, it’s also important to empathize with and inspire your audience so they feel you’re treating them less like a faceless user and more like a human being."
~ Sharon Lee
1️⃣ The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) will be your most valuable asset! A quick Google search of WCAG will lead you to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) page. Here, you will find a very detailed document organized into principles and guidelines, which will assist you in finding information on specific design elements. For example, if we want to design with company branding in mind, we need to consider things like shapes, fonts, sizing, placement, and colors. How we choose these things not only affects the first impression people have of the company but can also be the difference between whether your branding and applications are accessible.
2️⃣ The Ally Project checklist is another tool we can use to assist us in the development of accessible applications. This is a checklist you can follow that covers many different disabilities and the way design choices will affect users who have these disabilities. This checklist contains links to the WCAG guidelines so you can find more information if needed.
3️⃣ The Wave accessibility tool is a tool we can use to check the web pages and applications we have already created. You can visit their website and paste a link to a webpage you want to check or use their Google Chrome extension. This tool will open a panel on the left side of your page with an in-depth summary of any errors or warnings and a neat order section that outlines the path a screen reader would take when navigating the page. Then, there is the structural section, which shows the way a page is structured and allows you to determine how well-organized your page is in one quick glance. The last section, which tells where there may be problems with color contrast and has a tool where you can test 2 colours to see whether they provide enough contrast for them to be readable by the user. As a developer, this tool is highly valuable, and getting comfortable using it can bring huge value to any project you work on!
4️⃣ The last tool I will cover in this post is called Colorblindly. This is another Google extension that is very quick and simple to use. The Colorblindly extension is a popup with several radio buttons which allow you to navigate the web while seeing through the eyes of someone who is colorblind. There are several ways a person can be colorblind, ranging from difficulty with some colors to seeing no color at all. This tool can help us understand where colorblind people might struggle when navigating webpages and applications and filling out forms (think validation, for example.)
As we conclude this exploration into the realm of accessible design, it's clear that its impact extends far beyond compliance with regulations. It's about fostering empathy, understanding, and a deep appreciation for the varied ways in which people interact with technology. By considering diverse perspectives and integrating accessible practices into our design and development processes, we embark on a journey towards a more inclusive digital world. So, whether you're a designer, developer, content creator, or simply an avid user of the digital realm, the responsibility to champion accessible design rests in our hands.
Check out the links below and watch for the next post in this series about accessibility!
