The internet has made it incredibly easy for most of us to access and interact with the near infinite amount of information and content that has been published online. However, publishing content is only one side of the story. For the internet to truly be an open source of information and learning, it must be easy to access. It isn’t enough for the content to be there, it needs to be accessible.
When we think about publishing content online we often do so with a specific user in mind who will access and consume it. We take for granted that the person will have the same level of vision as we do, that they will be as literate as we are, and that they will have all of the same fine motor skills that we have in order to fully access and interact with our content.
But this is an assumption, one that newly instated
European Accessibility Act 2025 (EAA) is looking to challenge.
Principles of Accessibility
The
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to improve accessibility on the internet. These are the standards on which the EAA are based. They break web accessibility down into four sections:
- Perceivable: All users should be able to perceive (see, hear, read) web content.
- Operable: All users should be able to successfully interact with web content.
- Understandable: All users should be able to easily understand how the webpage works.
- Robust: Content must be usable on a wide range of user devices, including assistive technologies.
But how do we adhere to these standards? Below are some of the key features your webpage needs in order to be compliant.
High Colour Contrast
Users can’t perceive your website’s content if they can’t make out what is written on the page, and poor colour contrast is a major cause of this issue. This is a common problem but a reasonably easy fix for a knowledgeable developer. You need to ensure that any dark text has a light background behind it, and vice versa for light text. At Sprint Digital we use advanced colour checking tools such as
WAVE and
Popetech to check for colour contrast issues on our websites.
Limit Complex Layouts & Animations
Accessibility standards are not here to ruin your beautifully designed webpages. But there are some things you or your developer should be keeping in mind when designing pages. Extremely complex layouts and high levels of movement/animations on the page can make it very difficult for users to understand your page’s functionality. More complex designs also have a habit of being less robust, so it is worth ensuring that accessibility is a part of your design process from the get-go.
Keyboard Accessibility
Perhaps the most basic form of technical webpage accessibility is ensuring that your page is fully operable using only a keyboard. Many people do not have the dexterity to use a computer mouse to interact with page elements, so
navigating the page using arrows and the enter key are often an excellent alternative. In fact, many assistive technologies, even ones with no physical keyboard, rely on keyboard accessible elements so that they can navigate. These include speech-controlled page navigators, screen readers and specialised input devices. More on these below.
Alternative Text
But what about page elements that are not text based? How do we make an images, diagrams, or other media content accessible for everyone? The answer is alternative text, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Alternative text (or alt text) provides a text description for photos, diagrams, logos, and other non-text based content, so that Screen Readers and other assistive technologies can still understand and relay the page content to the user. This is a beneficial feature to add to your website regardless as it has
huge SEO benefits, as well as providing a text alternative for users with poor internet connections.
Screen Reader Accessibility
Screen Readers are software programmes used by website visitors who may have some form of visual impairment, or who simply find it easier to navigate pages via audio. The Screen Reader will use the same keyboard accessible page elements and alternative text mentioned above, alongside ARIA labels to provide an audio version of your web page. ARIA labels are particularly important here as they give context to links and interactive elements that would otherwise have none.
These are just a few of the major accessibility features that you should be aware of if you are a website owner or are in the market for a new site.
If you would like to learn more about how Sprint Digital can help you build an accessible website for your organisation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at
[email protected].
