CMSs & Accessibility: How to ensure your CMS meets accessibility standards?

Getting Started

If you are a website content author, it is important to understand the importance of accessibility compliance in your content management system.

Accessibility compliance ensures that your website can be accessed and used by people with disabilities, including those with visual, auditory, physical, and cognitive impairments.

Learning about accessibility compliance is important for anyone involved in website content creation, including web developers, designers, and content writers.

By making your website accessible, you can reach a wider audience and improve the user experience for all visitors.

How To

1. Start by familiarizing yourself with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, which provide a set of guidelines for making web content more accessible.
2. Ensure that your content management system allows for the creation of accessible content, including the ability to add alternative text for images, captions for videos, and headings for text.
3. Use clear and concise language in your content, and avoid using jargon or complex terminology that may be difficult for some users to understand.
4. Ensure that your website is navigable using only a keyboard, as some users may not be able to use a mouse or other pointing device.
5. Make sure that your website is compatible with assistive technologies, such as screen readers, which are used by people with visual impairments.
6. Test your website for accessibility using tools such as the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, which can identify accessibility issues and provide suggestions for improvement.

Best Practices

• Ensure that all images have alternative text that describes the content of the image.
• Use headings to structure your content and make it easier to navigate.
• Provide captions or transcripts for videos and audio content.
• Ensure that your website is compatible with a range of assistive technologies, including screen readers and magnifiers.

Examples

Let’s say you are creating a blog post about a new product that your company is launching.

To make the post more accessible, you would:

• Add alternative text to any images in the post, describing the product or the purpose of the image.
• Use headings to structure the post, with a clear and descriptive title at the top of the page.
• Include a video or audio clip about the product, with captions or a transcript for users who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• Ensure that the website is navigable using only a keyboard, so that users who cannot use a mouse can still access the content.