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Tips on Designing and Developing an Inclusive Website

taught by: Dennis Lembree


Session Summary

Go beyond accessibility compliance and learn a variety of techniques to design and develop a more inclusive and usable website.


Description

Go beyond accessibility compliance and create a more inclusive and usable experience for your website visitors. In this session, you'll learn how to develop web content to better support inclusive design (also known as universal design), and to go beyond screen reader accessibility. Common code patterns that are detrimental to inclusive design are explored as well as solutions on how to fix them. Several techniques will be presented which also provide better usability and reduce code complexity and code weight.

Examples and solutions for the following will be discussed:

  • Date text

  • Dynamic Search

  • Table descriptions

  • Button label

  • "Click here" links

General Outline:

  • Introductions

  • Overview of accessibility issues in code

  • Barriers to inclusivity:

    • Lack of fundamental skills

    • Lack of awareness

    • Fragile design and code

  • Examples and solutions (see above)

  • Summary

    • Tips

    • Further reading


Practical Skills

  • Techniques to develop web content to better support inclusive design and better usability (and reduce code complexity/weight).
  • Why screen reader-centric thinking can be detrimental to inclusive design.
  • What are some common code patterns that are detrimental to inclusive design and how to fix them.