Practical Web Accessibility: A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Inclusion

Everyone deserves to use the Internet. An estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. That’s 16percent of the world’s population, or one in six of us. At the same time, over 96 percent of the one million most popular websites have an accessibility issue. Add to this the massive rise in legal cases around sites not being accessible, including Beyoncé, Disney, and Netflix, and you have an important topic that more and more people are starting to engage with.

In this updated and revamped second edition of the Amazon technology chart-topping Practical Web Accessibility, you’ll be guided through a broad range of disabilities and access needs. You’ll understand the ways these users typically engage with the web, the barriers they often face, and practical advice on how your websites and content can be compliant, but more than that, inclusive and enjoyable to use. There’s also a new chapter on “Outsourcing Accessibility,” exploring third party “bolt-on” tools, “build your own website” platforms like Wix, and popular design systems. You‘ll explore whether they’re helpful or detrimental in the fight to make the web more accessible.

Throughout this book you’ll learn to test for, spot, and fix web accessibility issues for a wide range of physical and mental impairments. Featuring content from the latest compliance frameworks, including the newly released WCAG 2.2 and exploratory concepts in WCAG 3, you’ll see how to go beyond the basic requirements in order to help your users. You’ll also learn that an accessible approach won’t just help people with disabilities, it will improve your website for everyone.

This book comes complete with practical examples you can use in your own sites, along with a brand-new approach to auditing and improving a website’s accessibility, and a team’s approach to it, based on tools created by the author and refined over years as a consultant — The FAIR framework and ACCESS checklist. With these tools, you can set up processes for yourself and your team that will drastically improve the accessibility of your sites and, importantly, keep them that way in the future.

Suitable for those of any profession or experience level, Practical Web Accessibility gives you all the information you need to ensure that your sites are truly accessible for the modern, inclusive web. If you would like to learn about web accessibility in a clear and actionable way, this book is for you.

What You Will Learn

• A greater understanding of a vast range of disabilities that have online access needs, and the issues they typically face accessing content online.
• Ways to apply the practical steps required to cater for those needs.
• How to take your sites, and colleagues, on a journey from being inaccessible to accessible.
• The importance of accessibility in your designs, code, content, and more.
• The best ways to test andimprove your sites, so you can be compliant, and truly accessible. 

Who This Book Is For 

Anyone, regardless of what they do, who wants to learn how to make websites and their content more accessible for those with disabilities. In the world of web, the book has been used by front and backend developers, designers, product and project managers, team and business leaders.

Ashley Firth is the Global Director of Engineering at award-winning energy technology company Octopus Energy, responsible for building and overseeing the online experience of its many millions of users worldwide. Starting at the company as one of its very first employees (now standing at over 5,000), Ashley has championed the need for inclusive and accessible websites from the very beginning, and has spoken internationally on the subject, taking into account both customer and colleague needs when doing so.

Octopus Energy, along with being one of the best energy companies in the world for customer service, has won numerous customer and digital experience awards thanks to Ashley’s approach to accessibility. In 2020 - just four years after starting up - the supplier also became the 15th tech unicorn born out of the UK. The year after, it became a quintuple unicorn.

Along with his demanding day job, Ashley is determined to make web accessibility a cornerstone of any company’s handbook. He spends his spare time as a consultant to government bodies and private companies to help them improve their approach to accessibility. He is also a technical reviewer for books on the subject. He was shortlisted for the Young Energy Professional of the Year award.

All of Ashley’s experience culminated in the production of Practical Web Accessibility. The first edition of this book reached number one on the Amazon technology charts, and is used by readers and companies around the world to understand accessibility and improve their approach to it, always with fantastic results. Outside of accessibility, Ashley blogs and consults about management, which you can find at mrfirthy.me.