Training for designers and programmers in web accessibility

People with disabilities often face more difficulties keeping up with technology. Designers, as a general rule, agree with the idea that there is no content or information on accessibility, with some exceptions. Accessibility opens a world of possibilities to make technology a bridge of help and inclusion for people with different disabilities. It is the task of designers to promote and disseminate accessibility as a philosophy of life. In this way they will be comprehensive professionals, in charge of creating meaningful, enriching and desirable experiences for those who use our interfaces, covering all types of users. If you need to know more about accessibility, you can access the official W3C site where accessibility guidelines, support materials and resources are displayed. Accessibility applied to digital product design means that we are designing and developing products that can be used by any type of user, regardless of whether they have visual, motor, speech or cognitive disabilities. There are many myths surrounding accessible design, but two stand out. The first, that it is too expensive and, the second, that it limits creativity because many parameters must be taken into account. The thing is, neither of them are true. Designing in an accessible way is what all designers should be doing, since if a product is not accessible, then it will not be usable.

In order to consider an accessible design, it is necessary to know the basic guidelines regarding accessibility. Therefore, we recommend that you visit the following websites, where the basic guidelines are indicated when faced with designing an interface:

• http://acceso.uv.es/accesibilidad/artics/01-pautas-WAI.htm
• https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/es
• https://albertolacalle.com/diseno-accesible.htm
• http://accesibilidadweb.dlsi.ua.es/?menu=guidelines-1.0

If, on the other hand, you want to have the experience of a company in accessible web design and programming, ‘Web Accessibility’ has an expert team in web accessibility, made up of auditors and programmers. Our training and experience allows us to carry out a complete analysis of pages, web portals and digital platforms, and we can also take care of the adaptation of these spaces, to the mandatory AA compliance level, or raise your digital platform to higher levels.

Likewise, we offer constant advice on needs that require improvement in terms of accessibility, the analysis of new content, or the application of new functions. In addition, we offer essential technological support to any technical department for code correction and implementation of improvements.

Our experience in editing web portals based on HTML5 and CSS3 guarantees our ability to work with almost 100% of the web environments currently available on the market: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Concrete, CMSDip, Prestashop, Magento…

At ‘Web Accessibility’ we offer the appropriate tools for compliance with current regulations and legislation, applying good practice criteria to implement those advances that make your portal a reference space. In addition, we help remove architectural and communication barriers, to ensure that the website is adapted to the needs of each user. We put at your disposal a specialized team that will be in charge of analyzing what improvements can be implemented in your web space, to ensure that the website complies with the accessibility specifications included in Standard EN 301 549/ WCAG 2.1.

As a general rule, starting to design in an accessible way often sounds like a waste of time or unnecessary worries, especially for small teams. When you start to become familiar with the tools and integrate it into your design process, you will see how it will become as common a task as making a responsive website. Likewise, think that, at the end of the day, the goal is to make the web available to everyone.