Accessibility on the web is a big topic. A site with a good structure and semantic HTML will fulfill most of the necessary requirements, but not all.
The Accessibity Project aims to highlight the most common accessibility issues in a clear way, with code snippets and examples.
The WCAG
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG, are the guidelines or recommendations we'll be looking at. As of 5 October 2023, they're on version 2.2. This is how they describe their guidelines:
"[...] WCAG [...] defines how to make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Although these guidelines cover a wide range of issues, they are not able to address the needs of people with all types, degrees, and combinations of disability. These guidelines also make Web content more usable by older individuals with changing abilities due to aging and often improve usability for users in general."
The WCAG have four overall principles that provide the foundations for web accessibility: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. The Accessibility Project's information and examples are sorted under each principle.
Laws and Regulations, the EU and Sweden
Since the WCAG are the global standard, they are the basis for law making regarding accessibility on the web. The EU has has it's own set of guidelines, that include the WCAG, called EN 301 549.
The Accessibility Project is based in Sweden, which also has it's own guidelines, collected on the site Webbriktlinjer, which in turn are based on the ones from the EU. All WCAG guidelines mentioned on the Accessibility Project will provide links to the WCAG, references to the relevant EU EN numbers as well as a links to Webbriktlinjer for Swedish language information.
As of 2024, the Swedish laws for accessibility on the web are: Lagen om digital offentlig service (DOS), also called Lag 2018:1937 om tillgänglighet till digital offentlig service and contains provisions stating that services and information provided by a public entity through a website or mobile application should be accessible.
Only public entities are bound by law to fulfill the guidelines, but there is a new law planned to be in place in 2025 that will provide guidelines for public companies.
About The Accessibility Project
This site is a part of a thesis for the Frontend/App Developer 2022 program at Changemaker Educations. It's made by Freddie Kaplan as an exploration regarding accessibility on the web from a frontend developer perspective.