[♪♪]

You may have heard of 
accessibility in the past

or maybe you heard somewhere 
that your website should be accessible,

but what does that even mean?

The idea of anyone being able 
to use a website sounds simple enough,

but it's more nuanced than that.

There are lots of people in the world,

and there's many considerations to be made.

In general though,

there is one guiding principle 
that should make accessibility

a lot easier 
for anyone to understand.

Web standards and best practices 
tend to lead towards more accessible websites

and vice versa.

Designing a website to be 
accessible tends to lead you

towards web standards 
and best practices.

For example, screen reading software 
that assists users with visual impairments

can sometimes have difficulty 
when tables are used for layout

rather than being used 
for tabular data.

There are many different types 
of impairments that encompass

vision, hearing, motor skills, and more.

We'll learn about 
specific techniques to accommodate

all these different types of users.

Before we get into 
the technical details,

let's back up because sometimes 
web developers and designers wonder

why they should be so concerned 
with accessibility in the first place.

There are numerous reasons,

but here are three 
really important ones.

First and most importantly, 
it's just the right thing to do.

The web represents 
a giant leap forward in the quality of life

for people with disabilities.

For example, before the advent 
of online news and screen readers,

it was difficult, expensive, 
and oftentimes impossible

for a person with visual impairments 
to read a daily newspaper.

That alone should be reason enough.

Second, as I mentioned earlier,

building accessible websites 
has a tendency to lead towards HTML markup

that is semantic and easy for everyone, 
even computers, to understand and interpret.

Every designer and developer 
should understand the importance of this.

Lastly, you can get into trouble legally 
if you're not careful.

Many countries have laws 
that require government agencies

along with public and private organizations 
to maintain web content

that is accessible to people 
of all abilities and disabilities.

In the year 2000, 
a blind Australian man engaged in a court case

against the Sydney organizing committee 
of the Olympic Games,

and he won the case because, 
under the Australian Disability Discrimination Act of 1992,

the official website 
of the Sydney Olympic Games

failed to provide 
adequate accessibility to blind users.

Legal disputes of this nature 
can be extremely costly,

but they're also so easily avoidable 
by simply providing accessible content.

As we'll learn, 
it's not as difficult as it might seem.

Whether you're creating a new website 
or even if you're updating an old one,

you should familiarize yourself 
with the local and federal laws

that the website 
will be subjected to.

Here are a few documents 
to help you get started.

The World Wide Web Consortium, 
or W3C for short,

is an organization that sets the rules 
for HTML, CSS, and many other standards.

A W3C project known as 
the Web Accessibility Initiative, or WAI,

published the first version of the 
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, in 1999.

Since then 
and especially in recent years,

it has been accepted as the gold standard 
for creating accessible websites.

By the end of 2008,

the WCAG 2.0 had been released 
by the WC3 as a recommendation.

I highly recommend that you take a look 
at this document and read it over.

It is lengthy,

and we cover quite a bit 
of the information it contains.

But even so, 
you should at least look at it for reference.

In 1998, the United States Congress amended 
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973

to include Section 508 
which requires federal agencies

to make electronic information accessible 
to people with disabilities.

The portions regarding web technology

are based on the guidelines developed 
by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C,

and this is also the case for laws 
and regulations around the world.

In the UK, for instance,

the Publicly Available Specification,
or PAS 78, published in 2006

also references the WAI guidelines.

This is also true in Canada, Spain, Japan,
and many other countries.

But even so, you should 
study the laws that are local to your country

and strive to comply with them.

Accessibility might seem 
difficult or confusing right now,

but we'll go through everything 
one step at a time.

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