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.