7 Ways To Make Your Web Application More Accessible

How many times have you created a public-facing web application only to realize how horrifically unaccessible it is, and spend the subsequent days throwing ARIA attributes all over the place? I know I’m guilty as charged.

Sadly, web accessibility is not preemptively incorporated throughout the development process. Developers often forget, or just don’t care, to code with accessibility in mind.

Yet accessibility isn’t just about providing a way for people with disabilities to access your content. Writing accessible code also has positive implications on web app performance or SEO rankings. Thus, let’s delve into the seven ways you can make your web app more accessible. (I promise, it’s easy).

Before I let you in on my accessibility secrets, let’s cover some basics. At the very core of it, accessibility is the practice of giving every single user, regardless of circumstance, the same experience.

Not everyone interacts with your website or your application like you do. The simple fact of the matter is: you are not your user.

Statistics

According to the World Health Organization…

• 15% of the world’s population (over a billion people) have some form of disability.
• 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired
• 39 million of those are estimated to be blind
• 246 million are estimated to have low-vision
• 260 million people worldwide have disabled hearing loss

Although we traditionally think of disabilities as having a hearing or vision impairment, it actually encompasses much more. Users on mobile devices, as well as users with slow network connections, also fall into the category of being impaired. We even have to take…