Understanding & Supporting Web Accessibility with Rachel Cherry

Understanding & Supporting Web Accessibility

While websites are designed with the best of intentions, there is often too little regard for the large group of visitors who have different capabilities. Rarely is a site built to intentionally exclude someone from accessing products or information. However, without proper planning, education, and testing, you might be doing just that.

Accessibility is likely a topic you’ve heard mentioned by other web developers. It may even be a topic you’ve taken into consideration but don’t really know where to start. The crux of the problem is that you are likely unaware of how big of an issue proper accessibility actually is.

If you aren’t personally impacted by these different circumstances it can be easy to overlook simple things we have come to take for granted. You may not realize how heading structure can impact a screen reader’s ability to navigate and verbalize content in a logical order. If you’re not colorblind, you may have never considered the impact your color scheme has on someone who is. Even the download speed of your site can create an accessibility barrier for many.

In this presentation, you have an opportunity to learn from Rachel Cherry, a web accessibility champion. She will help you to define and understand common accessibility issues, what legal requirements your website might need to meet, ways you can create a more usable website, and how all of this effort creates a more open and inviting web for an entirely new demographic of visitors and customers, and so much more.

What You’ll Learn

  • Introduction to web accessibility
  • Legal requirements for web accessibility
  • Common accessibility issues
  • How proper accessibility improves SEOHow to test your site’s accessibility
  • Easy wins you can implement to improve accessibility without changing theme or plugin code
  • How to test the accessibility of themes and other products before you buy