Accessible content

So you’ve just learned about accessibility. Now what? The good news is that it’s never too late and there are steps you can take to make an immediate impact. But what should you do first?

When you work in digital accessibility, you hear a lot of things from customers, designers, developers, and agencies that just aren’t correct. Most are genuine misconceptions, but that doesn’t mean they’re harmless. At best, organizations can end up overspending on accessibility. But they also let organizations psych themselves out of pursuing greater accessibility out of fear that it will be too expensive or too difficult. And at worst, orgs might think they are accessibility conformant but are actually increasing their legal risk while missing out on the business benefits of digital accessibility.

Take a look at your town’s website. I was checking out my local township website to get some election related information last week. And it’s kind of awful. For everyone. But especially for users with disabilities.

Of course, the easiest and most cost-effective way to have a WCAG compliant website is to build it that way in the first place. And while it’s never too late, the absolute best time to start thinking about accessibility is when you are planning your site’s user experience (UX) and designs.

If you are new to the topic of web accessibility, there is a lot to absorb about what it means to make your website accessible. Some common accessibility issues are inherent to the way your site was coded while others have more to do with the content that you populate into your site.