How to get started with website accessibility

When I was entering the front end developer ranks, no one talked to me about accessibility. I didn’t know you could break the law by having an inaccessible website, until one day a university client came to my team for help on performing an accessibility audit. Man was I in over my head.

I started digging in and doing research, but found a lot of the documentation intimidating. Some of it was over my head. There was so much to digest, but I eventually made my way through. (Well, I’m actually still making my way through).

I’ve since learned that accessibility doesn’t have to be intimidating, and can even be fun.

What would have helped me at the beginning were a few practical principles to help me grasp the basics.

So let me share with you: Ben’s homegrown web accessibility principles.

They’re not rules.

They are mental shifts that I had to make when I started developing accessible websites.

Let’s get into it.

Principle 1: Web design is more than graphic design

When I started my first web job, I was handed a picture of a website and asked to turn it into a website.