Introduction

There are a range of things you can do to make a website accessible. Some best practice examples are listed below.

Alt text on images

‘Alt text’ is the pop-up text that appears when you roll your mouse over an image. It normally describes the image, such as, ‘East Riding of Yorkshire Council logo’ or ‘Image of a dog catching a ball’.

This alt text is picked up by screen readers, a piece of software that ‘reads’ the web page to users who can’t see or has limited vision, and ‘describes’ the picture to them using the alt text we provide.

It’s not just people with limited vision that benefit, but people who turn images off to stop them displaying, because they have limited or expensive bandwidth.

Keyboard input

Some people can’t use a mouse, including many older users with limited fine motor control. An accessible website doesn’t rely on the mouse and instead makes all functionality available from a keyboard which can be controlled, for example, via speech input.

Transcripts for audio

Just as images aren't available to people who can't see, audio files, such as podcasts, aren't available to people who can't hear.

Providing a text transcript (a written alternative) makes this information accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. A transcript doesn’t just benefit those with a disability, but those who are unable to listen to an audio file due to a specific situation - no headphones, no speakers, no bandwidth or in a public place. A transcript also allows users to skim read the content, to quickly get to the part that interests them.

Transcripts are a perfect example of why accessible solutions are of benefit to all users, not just those with a disability.

Sub-headings in web content

Imagine trying to read the sports page on the back of a newspaper without sub-headings, such as football, cricket and rugby. If you only wanted to find out the football news, you’d have to read the entire back page until you came across football.

With sub-headings, your eyes can quickly scan the text and jump to the part that interests you.

Sub-headings benefit web users in the same way, as it allows us to quickly scan down a web page and read only the part that interests us.

For non-sighted users, screen-reader software reads out the headings first and allows the user to only ‘listen’ to the text that interests them.

This is why sub-headings are one of the most important and easiest things we can all do to help all types of reader - whether it is a letter, a poster, a website or a document. Being able to scan read puts the user in control.