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Too often, website accessibility is seen as a checklist, but it’s much more complex than that. Having standards like the Web Content Accessibillity Guidelines (WCAG) provide a metric that we can measure against, often with a pass or fail scoring. But even with these guideliness, accessibility conformance cannot be automated.
Take for example, color blindness. Your design or corporate colors might pass for WCAG AA contrast ratios, but that’s assuming your visitor has normal color vision. What happens when your visitor is colorblind or colorweak. And, like most disabilities, colorblindness is on a spectrum, so each visitor might have a different perception.
Smashing Magazine has a nice article about the challenges of making your site conform to the guidelines while dealing with colorblindness. One big takeaway is this very cool tool: whocanuse.
CU*Answers Web Services has an accessibility expert on staff. Susanna is constantly staying up to date with guidelines and tools and educating our team. If you need help or are concerned about the accessibility of your website, check out our Web Quality Assurance program.
