What is accessibility?

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What is accessibility?

Accessibility is about making your website usable by as many people as possible. We need to take care of four diverse groups of people:

  1. People with visual impairments
  2. People with hearing impairments
  3. People with mobility impairments
  4. People with cognitive impairments

You can find more information about each type of impairment on “What is Accessibility” on MDN.

WCAG

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a guideline for accessible websites. This guideline states that content must be:

  1. Perceivable
  2. Operable
  3. Understandable
  4. Robust

Loosely translated, they mean:

  1. Perceivable: Users must be able to see and hear the information on the website
  2. Operable: Users must be able to use everything on the website with a keyboard
  3. Understandable: Users must be able to understand and use the website
  4. Robust: The website should support as many browsers and screen readers as possible

There’s a fifth principle that WCAG failed to mention:

Principle Number 5: Reduce Annoyance. Your content should annoy people as little as possible.

Take these principles into consideration as you build components. They’ll help you make your sites more accessible.

Accessibility and JavaScript

When it comes to JavaScript, what we’re interested in is people who are visually impaired and need to use screen readers. For this reason, we’ll put our focus on screen readers for the entire module.

Note: Don’t assume all screen reader users are blind. Many of them aren’t!