What & Why Web Accessibility?

What is web accessibility?

Accessibility is making a website accessible for all the person which includes people with disabilities. Let's first see what are disability and its types.

Disability and its type.

Disability is of 3 types permanent, temporary and situational. Let us see some common examples of disabilities in each category.

  • Disabilities based on touch
    • Permanent - The person who lost his single hand.
    • Temporary - The person who met with an accident and he can't use his hand for a month.
    • Situational - The woman carrying a child with one hand and trying to access the web.
  • Disabilities based on the eye.
    • Permanent - Blind person.
    • Temporary - The person who has gone for cataract surgery.
    • Situational - The person who is driving the car and trying to access the web.
  • Disabilities based on the ear
    • Permanent- Deaf person.
    • Temporary - The person with some ear infection.
    • Situational - The person working in the industry where the machine sound is so high.
  • There are a lot more disabilities like cognitive disability, etc...

Why accessibility?

  • There are laws for accessibility in America. To avoid legal issues at least your website needs a basic level of accessibility.
  • Accessibility makes the website more usable to normal users also. For example, The old person and the person from a rural background can easily use your application.
  • Accessibility gives you more number audience for your application.
  • Accessibility also makes your website more SEO-friendly.

Summary

Finally, accessibility is like treating everyone equally and giving them equal opportunities to all the people.

Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it. -Frances Wright