Everything You Need to Know About Web Acessibility

The web is a great place to access information and connect with people. It has opened up countless opportunities, making life more convenient in many ways. But not everyone experiences the web in the same way. Websites are difficult to use for people...

Mar 18, 2025 - 20:46
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Everything You Need to Know About Web Acessibility

The web is a great place to access information and connect with people. It has opened up countless opportunities, making life more convenient in many ways.

But not everyone experiences the web in the same way. Websites are difficult to use for people who have visual, hearing, or mobility impairments. These barriers make it harder to navigate content, and in some cases, make the web completely inaccessible.

This handbook will help you understand accessibility and how to implement it. Whether you are a beginner or an intermediate developer, you'll learn basic accessibility practices and some advanced techniques. This will help you make your website more inclusive.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is Accessibility?

Accessibility (A11y) is an important practice in web development that aims to make the website usable (accessible) for all people. This includes people who have disabilities that make it difficult for them to use websites. By making a website accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities, we ensure that they have the same opportunities as we do. We’re also helping to make the web a more inclusive place overall.

What kind of disabilities should we consider? In broad terms:

  • Visual impairments: blindness, blurred vision, and colour blindness

  • Hearing impairments: low to no hearing

  • Mobility Impairments: difficulty with physical movement(s)

  • Cognitive Impairments: like Dyslexia and ADHD

People with visual impairments commonly use devices like screen readers to visualise and understand a website’s content, for example. So a big part of web accessibility is designing a website that can be easily accessed by a screen reader.

There are various practices that you, as a developer, can follow to make a website accessible, which I’ll cover in this handbook.

Basic Accessibility Practices

Accessibility is not just an added feature on top of a website you’ve already developed. It is a practice that needs to be followed throughout the development process. Whenever you are creating content on the web page, ask yourself if it is really accessible.

Another important point is that accessibility is not just for people with impairments. It benefits everybody by making a website easier to use, thus improving overall user experience.

How do you achieve good accessibility? Well, there are some practices that you should follow while writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. We’ll discuss some basic practices in this section.

Before we get into it, let’s start by understanding what semantic and non-semantic HTML tags are:

Semantic and Non-semantic HTML

Non-semantic HTML tags do not convey specific meaning or purpose. They can be used for anything, depending on the CSS styling and JavaScript functionality. Examples of non-semantic tags are:

and . These tags are mostly used as containers for wrapping other elements.

Semantic HTML tags clearly describe their purpose to the browser and the developers through their names. They improve code readability and also help with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Examples of semantic tags include: