Lesson 7 - Sustainable Web Design In 20 Lessons
The entire 7th chapter of the book Sustainable Web Design In 20 Lessons.
Accessibility
Until now, we have been talking about topics such as what sustainable web design is, how to choose the right web hosting and how to set your page weight budgets. Now it’s time to open up for another important topic, and that is accessibility.
The word accessibility can be understood in many ways. On one side, you could say a website is accessible if it is lightweight. A lightweight website is faster to access from a slow internet connection compared to a heavy website. On the other hand, you can interpret accessibility as a website accessed by people with and without disabilities. I have chosen that this chapter should be dedicated to people who struggle with disabilities because I think it is essential to include everyone. We have the technology to make information accessible to everyone on our planet, so why don’t we? According to “Don’t do it yourself,” internet usage increased by 1.35% between 2020 and 2022. In the US, 61 million people live with disabilities, and 59.6% have internet access.
To put accessibility into perspective, I have collected some eye-opening information:
Globally, at least 2.2 million people have either near or distant vision impairment which may require a magnifying glass on websites.
More than 450 million people worldwide have a hearing disability.
5.9% of people with a disability are deaf or have severe difficulty hearing.
About 20 million adults in the US have problems lifting or grasping, which makes using a keyboard and mouse hard.
There are lots of people out there who struggle daily. Why do they also have to struggle on the internet? We have the technology to use the internet to make life easier for everyone, but so many people choose not to. Whether it is a conscious decision, I don’t know. In some European and Scandinavian countries, it has been decided by law that official government websites or websites working closely with governments have to be accessible, but should it have to be pointed out in the law? Shouldn’t it just be a standard that we include everyone instead of only a few? In this lesson, we are going to shine some light on the topic, get educated, and set a standard that can help everyone get access to online information.
What is accessibility?
Accessibility simply implies that everyone should have access to something. It makes the difference between people being able to access our content or not. Accessibility exists everywhere around us, and not only on the internet. When you go to the movie theater, it is common to see a ramp that helps people in wheelchairs get up the stairs. Also, when crossing the street, you can often hear a loud clicking sound that changes when the light is either red or green. This feature helps blind people to cross the street. There are many examples of things that make life easier for people with disabilities, and on a website, we can also follow some principles to improve the experience.
Cognitive accessibility
The first section we are going to talk about is cognitive accessibility. A website can confuse people with memory or other learning disabilities. The website’s language could also be hard to understand, confusing the reader. The web page could also be cluttered or full of large sections of text which might make users with a short concentration span give up beforehand.
