Accessibility requirements are a set of standards that allow users with different disabilities to access, navigate and interact with a website.
As technology evolves, the standards of accessibility, better known as WCAG, evolve as well. There are three levels of conformance in order to meet the needs of different groups and different situations:
- A
- AA (this includes all standards in A)
- AAA (this includes all standards in A and AA)
Most websites that incorporate accessibility look to meet AA standards.
Resources
- Full WCAG overview: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
- Current differences between A, AA and AAA levels of compliance: https://www.accessiblemetrics.com/blog/what-are-the-levels-of-wcag-compliance/
Why It Is Important
- The Law: You may be required by law to do this. Consult your legal counsel to determine if your website should legally meet certain accessibility requirements.
- Reach a greater audience: The more people are able to access/use your website the greater the potential to increase website traffic, improve engagement metrics, and generate more leads/sales.
- Equal access and equal opportunity: It is the humane thing to do; to make sure everyone, including people with disabilities, our able to participate in society.
Antenna's Involvement
Antenna will adhere to best practices when designing and building a website. However, in order to meet WCAG standards, AccessiBe should be installed on any websites that require ADA/WCAG compliance. If your website has greater accessibility needs beyond what is outlined below, please contact us to discuss how we can manually make your website WCAG 2.0 AA compliant.
Antenna's Proprietary WordPress Starting Framework passes WCAG 2.0 (Level AA) Guidelines:
- Accessible by keyboard only
- Logical structure of site components and content
- Provide text alternatives for non-text content
- Elements are highlighted during focus
- Provide a ‘Skip to Content’ link
- Site document has a language assigned
Accessibility requirements we keep in mind during design/development of our sites (but not guaranteed to pass the requirements):
- Provide text alternatives for non-text content
- Provide an alternative to video-only and audio-only content
- Provide captions for videos with audio
- Present content in a meaningful order
- Use helpful and clear page titles
- Elements do not change when they receive focus
- Elements follow a logical focus order
- No major code errors
- Label elements and give instructions
- Clearly identify input errors
- Use of Color - sites are designed with contrast in mind