A11y is a shorter form of accessibility. The idea is that products or websites should be accessible to all types of audiences. people with disabilities can use the Web as other normal people. Good accessibility is important to the success of any project. Not only accessibility is required by law in many countries. But if you fail then you will lose lots of potential users of your product or website.
Multiple research says there are 1 billion people around the globe who are living with some kind of disability. And day by day population age is increasing so the disabled audience is increasing. If you want to get a full return from your product then accessibility is a must.
Some agencies take care of the accessibility guideline on the internet. Web Accessibility Initiative (WIP) of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) publishes the guidelines which are recognized by governments and businesses.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - for content creators and developers.
- Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines - (ATAG) - for Web development authoring tools
- User Agent Accessibility Guidelines - (UAAG) - For browser and media player
Many technologies provide accessibility features for the web. HTML provides text description for an image which is read aloud by a screen reader and it helps to search engines as well. HTML 5 overall improves the quality. When you follow semantic HTML it does most of the work automatically. Apart from that ARIA attributes also help to extend the accessibility score for your application. Modern browsers and media players are improved to support accessibility.
There is a lot of guidelines and tools that help web developer create an accessible web page. Those tools detected violations as per the guidelines on your page. It shows help how to fix those violations.
Here are some tools
Conclusion
A11y is an important aspect of web development and an essential part of making the web accessible to a variety of users. By following web standards and guidelines, developers can create accessible web experiences for everyone. Furthermore, by providing accessibility features for content and technology, developers can ensure that their products reach the widest audience possible. It is mandatory legally and morally. So we must count accessibility from starting not at the end.