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Introduction to Web Accessibility

1 Introduction

Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality. But web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities. Web accessibility encourages the design of web sites that are flexible to meet different user needs, preferences, and situations. This is an introductory course for students without previous knowledge on web accessibility, but students must have previous knowledge on HTML and CSS.

This course organizes and presents course material to enable students to learn by themselves.

This course is composed of the following lessons:

  1. Introduction: Introduction to the content and structure of the course
  2. Disability: Definition of disability and e-accessibility
  3. Disability - Exercises: Exercises and questions about disability
  4. Why are websites developed with poor accessibility?: Reasons of developers don't paying attention to web accessibility
  5. Assistive Technologies: Definition of assistive technology
  6. Assistive Technologies - Examples: Examples of assistive technologies
  7. Assistive Technologies - Exercises: Exercises and questions about assistive technologies
  8. Accessible Version: To offer an alternative only-text version is not a good practice
  9. Accessible Version - Exercises: Exercises and questions about offering an accesible version
  10. WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
  11. HTML Validation: Validation of HTML code to check that it is correct and has no errors
  12. Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools: Comparisson of web accessibility evaluation tools
  13. Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools - Exercises: Exercises and questions about web accessibility evaluation tools
  14. Most Problematic Items: Results of WebAIM's Screen Reader User Survey #4
  15. CAPTCHA: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
  16. CAPTCHAs - Exercises: Exercises and questions about captchas
  17. Adobe Flash: Adoble Flash doesn't provide a good accessibility support and it's better to avoid it
  18. Links: Problems related to links
  19. Links - Exercises: Exercises and questions about links
  20. Images and Graphs: Problems related to images and graphs
  21. Images and Graphs - Exercises: Exercises and questions about images, graphs, and alternative text
  22. Headings: Problems related to headings
  23. Headings - Exercises: Exercises and questions about headings
  24. Colours: Problems related to colours
  25. Colours - Exercises: Exercises and questions about colours
  26. Forms: Problems related to links
  27. Forms - Exercises: Exercises and questions about forms
  28. Forms - Solution: Solution to the excercise about forms
  29. Text: Problems related to text
  30. Tables: Problems related to tables
  31. Tables Exercises: Exercises and questions about tables
  32. Review Exercise: Review Exercise
  33. Tools: Tools, such as validators, frameworks, boilerplates, etc.