For this week, we learned about web accessibility and its importance. From watching the videos provided, something that I learned from the people sharing their experiences is the importance of keyboard compatibility, as one person described how users who rely solely on their keyboards (whether because of permanent or temporary accessibility issues) experienced websites that either trap focus or require mouse interactions. This made me realize how common assumptions about mouse use can exclude many users, which reminds me to be thoughtful about tab order and keyboard operability when creating my own site. Another person shared how they had issues with low contrast text that blended into the background of the site, which made content effectively invisible, not due to the screen size or resolution, but simply because of poor color choice. Prior to watching these videos, I had not realized how much the color palette of a website could affect users, specifically those with color blindness.
Looking at the WCAG checklist, a technical feature that stood out to me was the all img tags having alt attributes. It could be directly implemented in editors or CMSs, which can help clarify the meanings of images for users. A conceptual design feature that I looked at was to properly structure headings, or deciding whether or not to use a table versus a list. This requires thoughtful content planning, rather than just randomly placing elements everywhere. Lastly, a feature that I had not considered before as a part of web accessibility was the point about non-text contrast, i.e. ensuring sufficient contrast for user interface components beyond plain text (such as form controls, icons, focus indicators). Previously, I looked at text legibility, but like I said before, I had not realized that contrast issues can also make interactive elements difficult to see.
When I put my site through the accessibility checker, I noticed that I had an empty heading, and a redundant link. To fix these things, I removed the unused heading to avoid confusion for screen reader users, and deleted the redundant link so that navigation is clearer, and less repetitive.