Check Web Accessibility Off Your List: Best Practices for Accessible Code, Design, and Content

By Genevieve Nelson | Originally posted at www.c2experience.com

Based on feedback from my Crash Course in Accessible HTML: ARIA Landmark Regions and the recent WCAG updates released in June 2018 for mobile accessibility, I wanted to provide a better resource for the people I work with on a day-to day-basis: content creators, designers, and web developers. The C2 Group recently published three web accessibility checklists full of best practices for accessibility. Using ADA Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines, these checklists are intended to evaluate and audit content to meet accessibility standards.

What do these checklists accomplish and why?

Ensuring an accessible web experience for all users isn’t just a social responsibility. In fact, there are plenty of benefits to incorporating accessibility into your team’s web strategy. Aside from being the right thing to do, applying best practices for accessibility will:

• Increase sales and marketing conversions
• Improve search rankings
• Mitigate business risks
• Enhance site usability overall
• Avoid the cost of an expensive retrofit

Content is the driving force for websites and the greatest differentiator for your brand! These checklists will help you optimize both your site’s content and functionality to achieve the underlying benefits of digital accessibility.

Who are these checklists meant for?

Accessibility is about making experiences enjoyable for everyone. With legal challenges for inaccessible websites steadily increasing over the past few years, these checklists are intended for individuals in roles that create, design, and code content. These role-specific checklists will provide:

• A rubric for passing WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 compliance
• Best practices for accessible content, design, and coding
• Links to W3C resources for deeper understandings

We recognize that not every organization is structured the same way, so these checklists are categorized into code, content, and usability and cover best practices for all WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Download C2’s Web Accessibility Checklists to start incorporating best practices into your code, design, and content creation and, most importantly, begin delivering experiences that are enjoyable and inclusive to all users.

Genevieve Nelson is a front-end developer and web accessibility champion at The C2 Group.