Web Accessibility Principles Flashcards
What does the acronym POUR stand for?
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
What is the “perceivability” principle of web accessibility?
- Perceivability is about making the output of web content available through multiple sensory modalities
- You have to be able to perceive web content through at least one of your biological senses for it to be accessible at all
What is the “operability” principle of web accessibility?
Operability is about making the input methods of web content functionally available to a wide range of input devices
What are some of the input devices to keep in mind when designing for operability?
- mouse or touchpad
- keyboard
- touchscreen
- voice recognition software
- other specialized input devices (most of which emulate the keyboard or mouse).
What is the “understandability” principle of web accessibility?
Understandability is about making content and interfaces that people can comprehend
What is the “robustness” principle of web accessibility?
Robustness is about ensuring compatibility with a broad range of user agents, including assistive technologies
Why does perceivability matter?
If you can’t perceive web content, it may as well not exist.
What is the only way for people who are both deaf and blind to access web content?
- Tactile/touch output (typically a refreshable braille device)
What is a refreshable braille device?
- Traditional print was on expensive, sturdy paper
- Refreshable braille devices bypass this by using a screen reader to present one line of text at a time, allowing the user to feel it, then moving to the next line
Why is digital text the universal format?
- Digital text is the most universally accessible format available, because it can be converted into all of the other useful sensory formats
- Provides access for people who are blind, for people who are deaf, and for people who are both blind and deaf
What does DU recommend when it comes to captions and trascripts?
- You don’t need to make captions and transcripts visible to all - having the option to turn captions on/off or a link to a full transcript is enough
- But there’s no rules against making them viewable by all - so if you want to do that, go for it!
How do you make dynamic content perceivable?
- Use ARIS to announce when a tab is “expanded” or “collapsed”
- You can use an ARIA live region to announce new content as it is inserted into the DOM.
Do you need to use ARIA and announce these things to a user who is blind?
Yes
- A user who is blind won’t know when tabs expand or collapse unless this change of state is announced to them
- If new content is injected into a page—such as an error message or a confirmation message - a user who is blind needs to hear this new information
What are two ways to ensure a user who is blind is aware of the state of a tab or of an error message?
- Use ARIA live regions
- Move the browser’s focus to those areas to force screen readers to read them
What does ARIA stand for?
Accessible Rich Internet Applications
What are some examples of how not everyone uses a computer in the same way?
- Someone with tremors in their hands might find it difficult to use a mouse or touchpad
- Some people have little or no movement in their limbs and rely on a device that senses movement in their cheek muscles or that tracks their eye gazes
- Some people rely on software that interprets their speech as voice commands
What is meant by In, Within, Through and Out?
- In: you must be able to navigate into web components
- Within: you must be able to use features within them
- Through: you must be able to navigate through them
- Out: you must be able to navigate out of all of them
These must be able to be done with all input devices or some users will not be able to use a web component
How do you script for device independence?
- Scripts are powerful and can override many native components
- Use device-independent event handlers (such as onfocus, onblur, onselect) instead of device-specific handlers (onmouseover, onmouseout, ondblclick)
- If you need to us both, test it both ways and on touchscreens
What does it mean to “control the focus” and what are examples of how to do this?
- When creating dynamic interactions, it’s important to pay attention to the location of the programmatic focus (which is more often than not the keyboard focus)
- When you create a pop-up modal dialogue, ensure that the focus automatically land on the modal dialogue.
- When a user exits the modal dialog, ensure the focus returns to the previous focus location
- Don’t let the focus get lost - this reverts back to the top of the document and the user wastes a lot of time and effort navigating back down