The year is 2020, the average adult spends at-least 4 hours a day on the internet and I’ve just exited a website because it wasn’t mobile-optimised.

Am I a digital snob, a millennial with overly high expectations or is this simply a reflection of the 21st century consumer? Accessibility is seriously important and key to any optimisation exercise; in fact, every day 12.9 million people in the United Kingdom experience an accessibility issue on a website.

To fix accessibility, we must first understand accessibility...

In its simplest form, accessibility is “the quality of being easy to obtain or use.”

A common misconception is that accessibility is confined to users with permanent visual, motor, auditory, speech, or cognitive disabilities, but that is simply not true. Accessibility needs extends way beyond permanent disabilities and into temporary or situational disability.

For example, having only one arm is a permanent condition, having an injured arm is temporary, and holding a baby in one arm is situational. Regardless of timeframe, in each case, the user can only complete tasks with one arm.

Therefore, the aim is to make web content more usable to all users whether they suffer from a permanent, temporary or situational disability.

Now we’ve got that straight, let’s get into my do’s and don’ts….

1 - Keep your content clear /and your layout simple

Ensure that all key components on a web page are easy to locate and identify, this includes navigation menus, links, and text sections. These should be at predictable locations and consistently identified. Form labels and instructions should be clearly associated with their controls, especially if you have a lot of content you want to display on your site.

Consider mobile when initially designing the layout and relevancy of content. Doing so will allow the content to zoom and respond to various screen sizes without loss of information or functionality. You’ll also avoid scrolling in two dimensions, consequently, helping the users with low vision, physical or motor disabilities.

2 - Avoid jargon and idioms

Be sure to avoid overly complex sentences and jargon. For some complex content such as medical information, separate and easy-to-read information may be necessary.

This is useful for screen reader users, users with low vision or users on the autistic spectrum. Keeping the content clear and short also helps users with dyslexia and providing illustrations can also be a helpful way of clarifying content.

3 - Don’t skimp on your Alt tags

Easy to forget but oh so important! Alt tags are brief descriptions of images that get buried in the site’s html. Most users will never see these descriptions, but visually impaired visitors to your website rely on them to know what’s in your images. A good alt tag is a short, creative description that accurately describes the image it’s attached to.

You may not need to include every detail about the image, but those that contain critical information need to have it spelled out in the ALT text.

Imagine for a moment the Alt text for the image below…

• "Smiley Face"
• "Six ladies smiling with sunglasses on in a line holding ALT signs in their hands".

Which of those would you find more helpful?