Web accessibility guidelines help us to ensure that our content meets at least a minimum threshold for accessibility. While it’s a long way off from universal design (designing to make sure our projects are maximally accessible for a maximal audience), it’s an important first step.

There are a variety of tools for evaluating accessibility. Tools like Funkify allow you to simulate various disabilities to get a sense of how design impacts usability. That’s useful to a point, although it’s always better (and necessary!) to talk to actual people whose lived experiences are a much better guide.

Today, we’ll use WAVE, the web accessibility evaluation tool.

  1. Choose a page on the SIUE website to evaluate, and run it through the checker at https://wave.webaim.org/.
  2. In a blog post (with the tag “Accessibility”), answer the following questions. Bullet points are fine!
    • What accessibility issues crop up for the page you chose?
    • Who is most likely to need the content on the page?
    • How might the accessibility issues impede people’s access to the content? Who might be most impacted?
    • Name one or two ways that the accessibility of the site could be improved – the smaller and easier, the better!