Development

Accessibility

Accessibility is making the content published online accessible to people with disabilities without any discrimination. The internet has evolved to be the source of all data and information store. Everyone should have an equal chance of accessing all the content that is available in the Internet.

Developed nations have come up with the IT Accessibility Legislation to make that possible. I.T accessibility legislation intends to allow people with various sensory impairments to obtain information on the internet as equivalent to those without the impairments.

It has been made mandatory for all the publishers either pdf, ePub, word, web page or any other type of content in the internet to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that was developed through W3C. The content that comply with this guidelines get an improved readability with the screen reading tools. Following this various other guidelines also evolved to support the accessibility like Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG). United States of America passed a legislation through Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Canada passed the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).

Web Accessibility:

Websites are properly structured and explanations wherever required for graphics in the web page are added through the alternative tags.

Specific HTML tags are used to define the content and group the content according to their purpose, like <dd> for description, <dt> for definition term, etc

The role element is added in every section or division of the webpage. There set of landmark roles used commonly are described in the guidelines document.

Above all, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has defined a technical specification Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) which would help define aria keywords to achieve accessibility of content.

Modifications in the existing javascript is made to ensure the animations available do not distract the readers.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is modified to remove bling spots and change the background and font colours that decrease the readability.

Interactive forms in the website are made accessible so that people with disabilities can use them without a third persons help.

Various plugins and online tools are used to ensure the content complies with the guidelines and is 100% accessible.

It is also been cross verified by the screen reading software to keep the quality under control.

Document Accessibility:

PDFs and word documents that are been published in the internet are made accessible with the help of Adobe Acrobat DC and Microsoft Word accessibility checkers.

The checkers are run on the files to identify the pitfalls where the content readability is compromised and they are modified.

Similar to the web accessibility conversion for document accessibility also we use HTML tags and CSS for modifying the styles.

Interactive forms in the document are made accessible so that people with disabilities can use them without a third persons help.

The accessibility checker reports are generated with the help of Adobe Acrobat DC and Microsoft Word accessibility checkers to keep the quality under control.

It is also been cross verified by the screen reading software to ensure the quality of the content.

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