Masterclass | Improving Website Accessibility

Jackie Latham is a web designer, specialising in designing and building WordPress websites for small businesses.  She is also a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. Over the years she has become determined to improve website accessibility as both a user and a designer herself. Many simple tasks become laborious for people with special needs, without small improvements and attention to details from website owners.   

In the masterclass we discussed how small changes can improve visibility or enable better use of essential tools for many users (e.g., a screen reader). Even adding proper heading and graphic titles can make a difference. The primary benefit of this Masterclass was identifying the key issues special needs user might have, most of which able-bodied people do not realise and can be easily improved. When designing a website for your business you are already spending time and money to make it functional, so why not make it better for more people? 

The main topics covered were: 

• What is accessibility and who is affected by it? 
• Why accessibility is important, even if you are not selling to the disabled community? 
• Some changes you can make to improve your site’s accessibility 
• How to check that you’re on the right track? 
• What to do if you want to achieve WCAG compliance? 

Lastly, it is crucial to remember that we cannot realistically make our website accessible to absolutely every type of user. However, we can try to do our best with what we have, and Jackie’s Masterclass helps to identify those key areas. 

W‌atch the Masterclass

Useful links

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• Contrast checker
  
• Colorhexa for checking how colours look to someone with dyslexia
  
• Download WAVE accessibility checker
  
• Download NVDA screen reader
  

Last modified: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 14:38:49 BST