◍Accessibility in practice

For three reasons, each of which is enough on its own:

1. It affects more people than you might think. Not just blindness — also poor eyesight, colour blindness, motor impairments, temporary situations such as a broken arm or bright sun on the screen.

2. It makes the site better for everyone. Good contrast, a clear structure, understandable language, keyboard operability — everyone benefits from these.

3. It may be mandatory. Legal requirements apply to certain offerings. Whether you are one of them depends on the type and size of your offering — that is a question you should clarify, not guess.

What is often overlooked: most improvements cost nothing. They are decisions made while writing and adding content, not extra work.

And the practical way in: the five points in the next section cover most of it.

These five achieve the most, and you can do all five yourself:

1. Contrast. Text must stand out clearly from the background. Grey text on a light grey background is the most common barrier of all.

2. Image descriptions. Every image that matters for the content gets a text saying what can be seen.

3. Headings in the right order. One main heading, with subheadings beneath it — chosen by meaning, not by size.

4. Meaningful links. “To our services” instead of “click here”. Anyone who has links read out to them otherwise hears “here” ten times.

5. Keyboard operability. Everything must be reachable without a mouse, and you must be able to see where you are.

What this achieves: the vast majority of the problems that matter in practice. The rest is fine-tuning.

Enlarge

With a checking tool — and, as a substitute, with two simple tests.

The requirement, roughly: normal text needs a clear ratio to the background; large text may have a little less. The exact values are checked by a contrast checker into which you enter the two colour values.

The simple tests:

1. Turn down the screen brightness. Can you still read the text? If not, it is too pale.
2. Look at it on your phone in the sun. That is the toughest test there is.

Where it is typically lacking:

• Grey help texts beneath form fields.
• Text on photos.
• Light text on a coloured background on buttons.
• Placeholder texts in input fields.

And a point that is often forgotten: not only text needs contrast, but controls too. A button that barely stands out from the background will not be found.

Above all, never use colour as the only piece of information.

What this means:

• A red field for “error” also needs text or a symbol.
• A chart whose lines differ only by colour is unreadable for many people. Add labels or different line styles.
• “The appointments marked in green” is an instruction that does not reach everyone.

Why: colour blindness is widespread — red-green deficiency in particular affects a noticeable share of men. On top of that come black-and-white printouts and poor screens.

The simplest test: set your screen to greyscale or make a black-and-white printout. Is everything still understandable?

And for status information: use colour and a word. “Done” in green is good. Green alone is not.

It answers the question: What would someone who cannot see the image be missing?

The rules:

• Describe factually what can be seen, not what it is meant to signify.
• Briefly — one or two sentences are almost always enough.
• Do not start with “Image of”. It is already known that it is an image.
• No lists of words. They help nobody and count against you with search engines.

Examples:

• Bad: “Image1”, “Photo”, “tradesman sampletown electrician installation”
• Good: “Two fitters installing a distribution box in a new building.”

Special cases:

• Purely decorative images need no description — they get an empty one so that they are skipped.
• Images with text in them — a poster, for example — need the text in the description. Better: do not put the text into an image.

And the most common mistake: leaving the description of the old image in place when the image is replaced.

Because many people navigate a page by its headings — they jump from heading to heading instead of reading everything.

What this requires:

• One main heading per page that says what it is about.
• Subheadings beneath it in descending order, without skipping levels.
• Headings that say something. “Services” is better than “More on this”.

What you should not do: choose a heading level because you like the font size. Size is design, level is structure. If a heading looks too big, that is a design question.

The test: read only the headings of the page one after another. Do they make up a sensible outline? If so, the structure is fine.

And the side effect: the same structure helps search engines and makes the page easy to skim for people in a hurry.

Put the mouse aside and go through the page with the Tab key.

What to look out for:

1. Can you get everywhere? Every link, every button, every form field must be reachable.
2. Can you see where you are? There must be a visible highlight. If it is missing, the page can only be operated blind — in the bad sense.
3. Is the order sensible? It should follow what you see.
4. Can you get out again? Out of a window, a menu, a consent dialogue. If you get stuck, that is a serious problem.
5. Does Escape work? Windows should close with it.

The most common finding: a drop-down menu that cannot be opened with the keyboard — or one that you cannot get out of.

How long it takes: five minutes for a small site. It is the most productive test of all.

Five things — forms are the most common place where people actually fail.

1. Every field has a label that stays visible. A placeholder text in the field disappears when typing and is therefore not a label.

2. Errors are named in plain language — “Please enter a phone number” instead of a red border.

3. The error appears by the field, not only at the top of the page.

4. Required fields are marked, and not only by colour.

5. No time limit that leads to the process being aborted.

What you should also do: keep forms short. Every field you do not need is a hurdle, and questionable in terms of data protection anyway.

And the test: fill in the form wrongly on purpose once. Do you understand what to do? Can you find the place?

Briefly, concretely and without jargon — and that does not only help people with impairments.

The steps:

• Short sentences. One thought per sentence.
• Active rather than passive. “We will check your enquiry” instead of “Your enquiry will be checked.”
• Familiar words. If a technical term is necessary, explain it the first time it appears.
• No abbreviations without spelling them out.
• Paragraphs instead of blocks of text. A break after four to five lines.
• The most important thing first.

What you should avoid:

• Convoluted sentences with several insertions.
• Officialese.
• Monster words that pack three terms into one.

The test: read the text aloud. Wherever you stumble or have to take a breath, the sentence is too long.

And the honest observation: writing understandably is more work than writing in a complicated way. It is still worth it.

Two things, and both are almost always left out:

Subtitles. For everything spoken. They do not only help deaf people — most people watch videos on the move without sound.

A text version. For longer content. Anyone who prefers reading or wants to look something up quickly gets there faster this way.

What you should also bear in mind:

• No automatic start with sound. That is unpleasant for everyone and a real problem for some.
• Controls must be reachable — with the keyboard too.
• No blinking or rapid flickering. It can trigger seizures.
• Also say important visual information out loud. If a phone number is shown in the video, it should also be spoken or written next to it.

And the pragmatic route: take automatically generated subtitles as a basis and go through them. Correcting them takes a fraction of the time.

In three passes, which together take an hour:

Pass 1 — tool. There are free checking tools that examine a page automatically. They find missing image descriptions, weak contrasts and structural errors. Treat the findings as a list, not a verdict.

Pass 2 — keyboard. As described above: mouse away, go through with Tab.

Pass 3 — screen reader. Switch on your system’s read-aloud function and listen to a page. It is sobering and instructive.

What a tool does not find: whether an image description makes sense, whether the language is understandable, whether the order is logical. Roughly half of the problems can only be judged by a human.

And what you do with the findings: sort them by impact. Poor contrast on every page matters more than a missing description on a decorative image.

If corresponding obligations apply to your offering: yes. Whether that is the case depends on its type, size and target group.

What such a statement typically contains:

• To what extent the requirements are met.
• Which parts are not accessible and why.
• How barriers can be reported.
• Whom to contact if nothing happens.

What you can do regardless of any obligation: a short page with a contact person and a request to report problems. It costs nothing, comes across as sincere and brings you the most concrete feedback you can get.

Please do not: claim full accessibility without having checked it. An honest statement about where things stand is better than a false assurance.

Whether, and to what extent, you are obliged is best clarified with professional advice.

With whatever affects the most people and takes the least effort.

The order:

1. Contrast. Affects every page and every visitor, and is a matter of settings.
2. Image descriptions on the most important pages. Not all at once — home page, services, contact.
3. Meaningful links. Search for “here” and “more” and replace them.
4. Forms. Labels and error messages.
5. Keyboard operation. Usually needs support.
6. Videos. Add subtitles.

How to divide it up: one hour a week, for four weeks. After that, most of it is done.

What you should avoid: waiting for a big project. Accessibility is not a one-off conversion but a habit when adding content.

And the most important habit: a description for every new image, a meaningful text for every new link. Then the problem does not grow back.