Product teams should be keen to understand how people interact with digital content and media. For one, web users’ interactions with website content changes over time. Two, it changes by situation. And three, it changes by ability. For example, what a web user can do in her 20’s, such as navigating web pages with a mouse, […]
Updated Guidance on Americans with Disability Act – Ensure Website Content is Accessible
Today 1 in 4 Americans hit virtual roadblocks accessing web content simply because their capabilities, adaptive strategies or their assistive technologies are not considered during the design of digital experiences such as websites. How many website users in the U.S. could potentially be affected? There are 307 million internet users and 276.8 million mobile internet users in […]
Define Initial Requirements: Accessibility in the Product Development Lifecycle Part 2 of 4
Read Part 1 of this series here: Plan to be Accessible by Design: Accessibility in the Product Development Lifecycle. Forward-thinking product teams will plan for and implement inclusive user experiences at the start of the design process to achieve better outcomes. More commonly known as Shift Left, this method advocates ‘baking in’ inclusive user experience […]
Designing Accessible Digital Experiences Begins with Personas and User Stories
The disability market has hit an inflection point. More global organizations buying tech are committing to accessibility in 2022 due to pressure created by the increasing number of digital accessibility lawsuits, and the increasing number of firms creating diversity and inclusion programs (DE&I). This is creating competition for opportunities to attract the global disability market […]
On the Horizon WCAG 2.2: A New Standard for Interacting with the Web
We’ve been looking at The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Guidelines for several weeks, and we’re now rounding out this series by taking a close look at 5 of 9 WCAG 2.2 A, AA, and AAA Success Criteria. If you haven’t been following this series, the W3C released a working draft of WCAG 2.2 […]
The Powerful Link Between Accessibility, SEO, and Google
It’s long known that good accessibility is good for search engine optimization (SEO). However, most people think of this connection as being specific to implementing alt attributes on their images when the truth is far more involved and complex. In fact, a core measure of the quality of a website and its content is how […]
Get Ahead of Headings: How to Correctly Use Headings for Accessibility
Heading Overview For those that may not be familiar with heading levels, here is a quick run-down. Titles on your web page will have heading (<H>) tags to indicate their level of importance. Web developers use <H> tags for page titles to structure the content of the page. Not only are <H> tags used for […]
Key Takeaways from CPACC Accessibility Certification
The Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies, or CPACC, is an accessibility certification bestowed by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). It covers conceptual knowledge of disabilities, universal design, accessibility laws, management strategies, and software development. This test deepened my understanding of accessibility and opened up my thinking about accessibility in both the digital […]
Accessible Balance: HTML & ARIA
Introduced in 2008 by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) group, the family of attributes known by the acronym ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) allows developers to supplement HTML where it lacks in accessibility. ARIA is a group of attributes that work to supplement HTML attributes to create a more accessible experience for those using assistive […]
3 Days, 300+ Sessions: What I Discovered at CSUN Conference 2019
In 2017 I wrote The Next Big Consumer Segment: People With Disabilities, predicting there would be a tremendous economic opportunity for those progressive, smart organizations serving digital accessibility. Now, two years later, it has arrived in a big way, and I heard a lot about it from our largest tech companies and their leaders at […]
Resolving Common Accessibility Errors – Low Contrast
In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), we’re examining common accessibility errors and providing recommendations for fixing them. The first topic in this series: Fixing Low Contrast WCAG Success Criteria 1.4.3 – Contrast (Minimum) The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the […]
Celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2019: Tips & Fixes
Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day! As the global community meets to discuss and promote accessibility and inclusion, Perficient Digital is releasing a series of blogs today and over the next several weeks to discuss what we’ve seen over the past few years. WebAIM, a non-profit organization from Utah State University, recently published a report on […]