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5 Big Web Design Predictions for 2022

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Every year, at this time, blogs like this one like to try and predict what’s going to happen in the year ahead. It’s a way of drawing a line under the archive and starting afresh. A rejuvenation that, as humans, we find life-affirming.

Ten years ago, I would have had high confidence in these predictions — after all I was eventually right about SVG adoption, even if it took a decade. But the last few years have shown that web design is tightly interwoven with the muggle world, and that world is anything but predictable.

So as we look at what might occur in the next year (or five), think of it less as a set of predictions and more as a wishlist.

Last Year’s Predictions

When I write this post every January, I like to keep myself honest by glancing back at the previous year’s predictions to gauge how accurate (or not) my predictions have been.

Last year I predicted the long-term trend for minimalism would end, WordPress would decline, cryptocurrency would go mainstream, and then hedged my bets by saying we’d make both more and fewer video calls.

Gradients, maximalism, and the nineties revival pulled us away from minimalism. It’s still popular, just not as dominant.

WordPress is still the biggest CMS in the world and will continue to be for some time. But the relentless grind of no-code site builders at the low end, and being outperformed by better CMS at the high end, mean that WordPress has passed its peak.

Over-inflated predictions for BitCoin reaching $100k by December 2021 turned out to be a damp squib. In the end, Bitcoin only tripled in value in 2021. However, with micro-tipping and major tech companies moving into the arena, it’s clear digital currency arrived in the public consciousness in 2021.

And how could I be wrong about more but also fewer video calls? So I’m calling that my first clean sweep ever. With that heady boast, let’s take a look at the next twelve months.

What Not to Expect in 2022

Do not expect the Metaverse to be significant in anything but marketing speak. Yes, the hardware is slowly becoming more available, but the Metaverse in 2022 is like playing an MMORPG on PS5: theoretically, great fun, until you discover that absolutely none of your friends can get their hands on a console.

Ignore the blog posts predicting a noughties-era retro trend. All those writers have done is looked at the nineties-era trend and added a decade. Fashions aren’t mathematical; they’re poetic. Retro happens when people find a period that rhymes with present-day hopes and fears. After the last couple of years, if we revisit a decade, it’s likely to be the late-forties.

Finally, don’t expect seismic change. Material design, parallax scrolling, and jQuery are still with us and are still valid choices under the right circumstances. Trends aren’t neat; they don’t start in January and conclude in December.

5 Web Design Predictions for 2022

Predictions tend to be self-fulfilling. So we’ve limited ourselves to five trends that we believe are either positive or, at worst harmless. Of course, there are no guarantees, but if these come to pass, we’ll be in good shape for 2023.

1. The Blockchain is Coming

Underpinning the cryptocurrency industry are blockchains. In simple terms, they’re a set of data that can be appended to but can’t be edited or deleted. Think of it as version control for data.

As with most technology, the first wave has been a way to make a fast buck. However, the exciting development is blockchain technology itself and the transformative nature of the approach. For example, Médecins Sans Frontières reportedly stores refugees’ medical records on the blockchain.

Imagine the Internet as a set of data, editable for a micro-fee, and freely accessed by anyone anywhere. Instead of millions of sites, a single, secure, autonomous source of truth. Someone somewhere’s working on it.

2. Positivity & Playfulness & A11y

Even before world events descended into an endless tirade of grim news, time was running out for dull, corporate, geometric sans-serif design.

We added gradients, we added personality, we embraced humor. And contrary to the established business logic, we still make money. Over the past few years, there have been extraordinary efforts by designers and developers to examine, test, and champion accessibility, and thanks to them, inclusive design is no longer reliant on the lowest common denominator.

In 2022 you can get experimental without obstructing 10%+ of your users.

3. Everything Green

Green is a fascinating color, the primary that isn’t (except in RGB, when it is).

Green has the same visual weight as blue, is substantially more flexible, and yet to date, has been radically underutilized in digital design.

Green has a prominent cultural association with the environment. At a time when tech companies are desperate to emphasize their ethical credentials, marketing companies will inevitably begin promoting a brand color shift to green as a quick fix for all those dumped chemicals, strip mines, and plastic-filled seas.

We’ve already seen earthy hues acquire popular appeal. At the other end of the vibrancy scale, neons are popular. Green spans both approaches with everything from calm sages to acidic neons.

In 2022, if you’re looking for a color to capture the moment, look to green.

4. Hero Text

A picture is supposed to be worth 1000 words, although I’m not sure anyone has actually tried to measure it. The problem is that sites increasingly rely on stock images, so the 1000 words that we’re getting may or may not accurately reflect 100% of our message.

In 2022, a handful of well-chosen words will be worth more than an image, with hero images taking a back seat to large hero text. This is aided by a number of minor trends, the most notable of which is the willingness of businesses to look beyond the geometric sans-serif to a more expressive form of typography.

Reading through the prediction posts on sites other than this, almost everyone agrees on large hero text replacing images, which virtually guarantees it won’t happen. Still, at the start of 2022, this seems to be the direction we’re taking.

5. Bring the Noise

One of the unexpected consequences of the past couple of years has been a renewed connection with nature. The effortless complexity in nature is endlessly engaging.

We’ve already begun to popularise gradients — there are no flat colors in nature — and the next logical step is the addition of noise.

In visual terms, noise is the grainy texture that sits so beautifully in vector illustrations. Noise has dipped in and out of trends for years, hampered a little by the leap in file size it creates. However, with WebP and Avif file types, noise is now usable on production sites.

Designing in 2022, when in doubt, throw some noise at it.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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22 Exciting New Tools For Designers, June 2021

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This month’s new tools and resources collection is a mixed bag of elements for designers and developers. From fun little divots to tools that can speed up development, you are sure to find something usable here.

Here’s what new for designers this month:

June’s Top Picks

Codewell

Codewell is a service to help you learn, practice, and improve HTML and CSS skills with real templates. The benefit here is pretty obvious. When working with real templates, you can see the result of actions and changes. The tool includes free and premium options with new templates to work on weekly. Everything works in a responsive environment, and free plans have access to free challenges and a Slack community; a paid plan also includes source files and premium challenges. You need a Github login to get started.

LoomSKD

LoomSDK is an easy and reliable way to add video messaging to your product – and it’s free. The SDK enables your users to record, embed, and view with Loom videos directly within web apps – adding clarity and context to any workflow.

Pintr New Image

Pinter New Image turns photos into funky and fun line images. Upload an image with plenty of contrast, use the controls to set the look you want to achieve, and download. The new images are available as PNG or SVG. Maybe use it to create your next profile photos for social media or a nifty avatar.

Terms & Conditions Apply

Terms & Conditions Apply is a game that explains all those little pop-ups that you accept to enter and interact with websites. You are tasked with a mission to start the game: Do not accept terms and conditions, say no to notifications, and opt-out of cookies. Can you do it?

Khroma

Khroma uses artificial intelligence (via personalized algorithm) to learn what colors you love and create palettes for you to discover, search, and save for use in projects. The beta tool is easy to get started with, although you do have a little color-picking homework to get started.

6 WebTools

Mmm

Mmm is a different type of website builder. The tool, which is still in alpha, allows users to create drag and drop websites in a simple manner. It works almost like making a digital collage. Users can get a custom URL, and every page is responsive. The interface is designed so that you can even build yours on a phone. And here’s the other feature – they encourage messy designs.

LightGallery

LightGallery is a lightweight, modular, JavaScript image and video lightbox gallery plugin. It works with React.js, Vue.js, Angular, and TypeScript. It includes plenty of demos and documentation to help you make the most of this gallery tool.

Vandal

Vandal is a nifty browser extension for Firefox or Chrome that allows you to navigate back in time without changing tabs. The utility of Vandal is to allow quick and easy access to all the archived snapshots for a URL, and it supports navigation to a snapshot as well.

CSS Layout Generator

The CSS Layout Generator is a tool for creating the CSS for layout components. It is also a learning tool for teaching what is possible in CSS for positioning elements in the browser. Tweak specifications to see how it impacts the layout, CSS, and HTML.

Alpaca Data API

Alpaca Data API is an easy-to-use feed that allows you to bring in stock market data for modeling and backtesting. (it includes free and premium options based on your needs.)

Mobile Palette Generator

Mobile Palette Generator is a color-picking tool that will help you select the best hues for mobile design projects. It then shows you all the specs for primary, secondary, and accent colors.

6 Icons and UI Kits

Iconoir

Iconoir is an open-source icon repository with more than 900 SVG icons. Search icons, browse by category or poke around for what you are looking for. Everything is ready to use without signups or forms to fill out.

Pmndrs Market

Pmndrs Market has a collection of more than 300 three-dimensional elements and drawings of things for use in projects. Model renders are in a rough style with a realistic feel.

Boring Avatars

Boring Avatars is a fun collection of semi-customizable avatars without faces, hence the name. It’s a fun playground that puts a new twist on something that you might not expect to do differently.

Spark

Spark is a free download with three different website design starters. The hero images are ready to build from and are made for Figma.

Venus Design System

Venus Design System is a premium UI kit packed with more than 2,000 components and states that allow you to design fast. There’s also a demo version for you to test before you buy.

ReadyUI

ReadyUI contains more than 200 blocks and designs for agencies, developers, startups, and more. Everything is production-ready using Bootstrap and Figma files. Choose from light or dark themes and search for a design that works for your project.

5 Tutorials

Creating Generative SVG Characters

Creative Generative SVG Characters is a marriage of JavaScript and SVG that creates fun characters derived from drawings. Using shapes and a little code, you can see how to draw smooth lines, create polygons, and add other shapes for a fun feel. There’s a full demo on Codepen.

5 Steps to Faster Web Fonts

5 Steps to Faster Web Fonts helps you remove some of the bulk from popular typography options. Iain Bean explains a set of methods you can deploy to ensure that load times are quick with some applicable code snippets. Here’s a preview: Tip 1 is to use the most modern file formats (WOFF2).

The Perfect Link

The Perfect Link walks you through some accessibility checks from the A11Y Collective for linking best practices. Some of the things you think are the “right way” may be challenged here. The information goes through everything from design to semantics and is wonderfully thorough. It’s a must-read.

Readsom

Readsom is a curated collection of newsletters and emails that you can read online or sign up for. Its catchphrase is to “discover content you’ll want to read.” It is a good way to find newsletters that interest you, including plenty of design and development options that you might not otherwise know about.

Famous First Websites

Famous First Websites isn’t a tutorial per se, but it does provide a good place to do some visual learning. See what your favorite websites looked like when they launched and the evolution of the designs.

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Is It Time to Reset HTML?

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HTML is one of the foundational building blocks of the Web. But just as web design best practices and techniques change over time, so does the code we use. As HTML evolves, some of its older markup has been deprecated while other parts have been repurposed.

Does that create more problems for us, though? Would we be better off starting over so we can make sure we’re all working from the same language rather than trying to edit out the bits we don’t want or need?

Problems With Holding Onto Legacy HTML

Let’s take a look at what happens when we amend the rules of HTML over time and how it impacts the Web:

1. It’s Risky to Leave Deprecated HTML Behind

Whether certain features have become outdated and need to go, or browsers have stopped supporting certain tags altogether, deprecated code eventually becomes a problem.

You’ll find a long list of deprecated HTML on the HTML.com website:

For many of these, HTML tags and attributes have been replaced by more efficient CSS styling. There are also examples of HTML deprecation because the features have become outdated (like frames).

Yet, there are still websites out there that contain deprecated HTML.

In some cases, the HTML sits silently on the other side of the website. If there’s enough of this errant code hanging around, though, those extra characters and directives could slow down your server’s processing time and render pages more slowly than usual.

In other cases, the HTML breaks features on the front-end of a website. Take, for instance, this warning from Mozilla regarding the <nobr> tag:

Using deprecated code can create inconsistent and poor experiences on the front-end. And when all browsers finally get on board and decide not to support an HTML tag anymore, all visitors will be left with a broken UI.

So, while it’s great that HTML5 has deprecated legacy HTML that’s no longer useful or necessary, that’s not to stop everyone from using it or leaving it behind on older websites. 

2. Legacy Code Focuses on Style; Not Semantics

As I mentioned, a lot of deprecated HTML has been phased out and replaced by CSS styling. And that’s a good thing.

Let me give you a simple example of this…

My favorite book is <i>The Stand</i> by Stephen King. The first time I read it, I didn’t sleep for <i>three days</i>. Thankfully, when I revisit it every year, I have fewer nightmares and can more greatly appreciate the storytelling aspect of it.

In the above paragraph, I’ve used the <i> tag to italicize several words.

In the early days of HTML,<i> stood for “italics” (the way<b> stood for “bold”). With HTML5, however,<i> will still render as italics, but its semantic meaning isn’t as broad. It’s been repurposed to indicate a stylistic change, which is important for things like book and film names, foreign words, and so on. To express emphasis, we use the <em> tag instead. 

Keeping the legacy <i> and <b> tags can lead to issues, though. 

In the statement above, I’ve italicized the name of the book (The Stand) as well as the number of sleepless nights I had (three days) with<i>. Whether the designer decides today, tomorrow or ten months down the road that they want to change the way literary or cinematic references are styled, my choice of HTML will stand in their way.

Because all of my italic text is indicated by <i>, styles can’t universally be applied to specific content (like book references). Instead, the designer would have to go through and clean up my code so that it looks like this:

My favorite book is <i>The Stand</i> by Stephen King. The first time I read it, I didn’t sleep for <em>three days</em>. Thankfully, when I inevitably revisit it every year, I have fewer nightmares and can more greatly appreciate the storytelling aspect of it.

This would then allow the semantically italicized content to remain intact while the designer or developer adjusts the styles of the book title here and across the site. (Though, really, the first italicized phrase should be surrounded by <cite> as it would be more semantically accurate.)

While it’s great that we’ve created guidelines for using legacy HTML today, keeping old code around can confuse writers, designers, and others who are familiar with the previous way of formatting content. By resetting HTML, throwing out old styles, and creating one language we use consistently across the web, we won’t create more work for ourselves later on.

3. Deprecated Code Hinders Accessibility

Another big reason why repurposed and deprecated HTML is a problem is because of accessibility.

For starters, when you leave deprecated and unsupported code behind, it’s likely to cause issues for screen readers, search engines, and browsers that use HTML for clues about the content.

Header tags (e.g.<h1>, <h2>, <h3>), for instance, aren’t just used to visibly break up large chunks of text. Header tags and, more specifically their hierarchy, present important information about the relationship between subjects on a page — and this is the kind of thing that screen readers and search engines pick up on.

That’s why we need to be very careful about the code we leave behind the scenes, even if readers on the front end can’t visibly see it. Let’s look at an example of how this can affect accessibility:

Is there an <i>à la carte</i> menu or is it just <i>prix fixe</i> tonight?

If a screen reader were to read over this sentence, the French phrases would be said with the same emphasis as any other italicized words on the page.

This is why HTML5 encourages semantic coding instead of purely stylistic.

The proper way to write HTML in the line above would be:

Is there an <i lang="fr">à la carte</i> menu or is it just <i lang="fr">prix fixe</i> tonight?

There are two reasons to do this:

  1. To indicate to screen readers that there’s a language change.
  2. To make it easier for designers or developers to create a custom style for foreign phrases.

Semantic coding is essential for designers that work on multilingual websites.

As the World Wide Web Consortium explains, languages like Japanese don’t use italicization or bolding for emphasis — at least not the way English speakers do.

So, to properly translate a page from English, a Japanese designer would need to remove the italics or bolding and add surrounding brackets to the words. However, if everything is coded with <i> and <b>, or there’s a mix of <i> and <em> and<b> and <strong>, it’s going to be really difficult to Find-and-Replace the correct HTML with ease.

So, if accessibility or internationalization are concerns for you at all, getting clear on the HTML you write with is going to be really important.

Wrap-Up

The fact of the matter is, it requires a lot of work to have the rules of HTML rewritten. So while it would be great to reset HTML, I don’t know that it’s all that practical.

All we can really do is stay abreast of what’s happening with the language, edit out legacy code from our websites the second it becomes deprecated, and always use tags and attributes that are supported. By playing around with deprecated or repurposed code, we only put the website visitors’ experience in jeopardy, so it’s best to take the time to clear out the old any chance we get.

If we can all get on the same page about this, problematic legacy HTML will eventually disappear from our websites and memories.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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Stark Launches Public Library For Accessibility

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Inclusive design is all about designing sites with everyone in mind instead of designing for your own preferences. It’s an essential component in a professional-grade site and the cornerstone of a successful project.

Accessibility (A11y for short) is the technical branch of inclusive design. Accessibility is a science: it knows what markup is required to make the text available to the visually impaired; it knows the minimum button size for someone with limited motor control; it knows how complex navigation can be for someone with cognitive dysfunction. Accessibility is the engine that powers an inclusive design.

Because accessibility is so complex, it takes a huge wealth of knowledge to do it well. Luckily for you and me, there’s now a free resource you can use to brush up on your skills and improve the ROI of your site.

Stark has just acquired a11yresource and relaunched it as the Stark Public Library — reportedly the largest accessibility resource on the web. The library contains around a thousand different resources. You’ll find blog articles, checklists, formal courses, tools, links to web standards, and a whole lot more. As the library grows, the expectation is that Stark will add new features aimed at fostering a community.

Stark is a suite of accessibility tools for designers that integrates with XD, Sketch, and Figma. It’s free to use the basic package, and the commercial plan is $60 per year. The Public Library is free for everyone to access.

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AccessiBe Review 2020: Solving Web Accessibility with AI and Scalability

Web accessibility is important for two reasons:

  1. Being ADA & WCAG compliant is required by law (we’ll explain this further) so if your website isn’t compliant, you can get sued.
  2. It allows people with disabilities to browse your website, which increases your potential audience and it is the decent thing to do.

In this accessiBe review, we’ll cover:

How Does accessiBe Work

accessiBe is an automated solution that combines two applications to achieve full compliance.

Foreground application: the accessibility interface. This is the accessibility menu that allows users with disabilities to adjust the various UI and design elements on your website so it meets their unique needs.

Background application: proprietary AI technology that’s responsible for the ‘heavy lifting’, screen-reader, and keyboard navigation optimization.

The combination of these two applications is unique for accessiBe for a few reasons. While most available accessibility solutions offer just one of the two or rely on manual remediation, accessiBe checks both boxes and does it in a fully automated way.

Additionally, and most importantly, accessiBe continuously scans your website, every 24 hours, identifying and fixing new accessibility issues as they arise. Websites are dynamic – meaning, keep updating constantly with new content, pages, images and so on; being ADA and WCAG compliant is an ongoing concern, not a one-time fix.

How to Install and Setup accessiBe

You install accessiBe by inserting a single line of code on your website.

From your end, that’s all it takes.

The first thing that happens is that the accessibility interface appears on your website. The menu is available via the accessibility icon (that also appears automatically.)

Source: accessiBe website

Next, the AI application scans and analyzes your website for accessibility issues and compatibility with screen-readers and keyboard navigation requirements and fixes them. This automated process takes 48 hours.

Once the initial 48 hours have elapsed, your website is compliant.

From here on, accessiBe automatically scans your website every 24 hours to identify and fix new accessibility issues as they arise due to website updates.

Why Ongoing Compliance is Important

We’ve mentioned this already, but it’s important to stress this point.

Whether you have an e-commerce website or a company website, you keep updating and changing your website; new items go up for sale, new videos and content pieces are added. Every addition or removal from your website has the potential of creating accessibility gaps (like missing alt text for images.)

By continuously scanning and fixing your website, accessiBe ensures that you stay compliant. An accessibility audit remediates your website for the specific point in time the audit took place. Meaning, you’ll need to audit your website periodically to remain compliant, which is a costly affair. With accessiBe you don’t need to worry about this.

accessiBe Front End Features – The Accessibility Interface

The accessiBe accessibility interface (the menu that is available for users) is installed automatically on your website once you insert the line of code. Let’s look at the various features that are available for people with disabilities.

Accessibility Profiles Explained

First, it allows you to choose from a pre-defined set of profiles optimized for various disability needs:

When one of the profiles is selected, the required adjustments are instantly applied to your entire website.

For example, The ADHD Friendly Profile creates a reading mark that follows your mouse movements that diminish distractions and allows better focus:

The Cognitive Disability Profile frames all the elements in bounding boxes and adds an ‘reading cursor’ that acts as your mouse to allow enhanced orientation:

Each of the predefined profiles includes a suite of features that target the unique accessibility needs of the disability; the Epilepsy Safe Profile prevents videos from playing automatically, dims all the colors on your website and eliminates flashing and blinking animations; the Visually Impaired Profile enhances all your website’s visuals, enlarges all fonts to allow most visual impairments conditions (degrading eyesight, tunnel vision, cataract, glaucoma and more) to be able to browse your website with ease.

The last two profiles, Blind Users and Keyboard Navigation, work in unison. They allow blind and motor-impaired individuals to browse and use your website as they are used to, through screen-readers and keyboard functionality, respectively.

Two things need to be mentioned here:

  1. Blind individuals have screen-readers installed on their computers in the OS-level, meaning, on the hard drive of the computer. They use them to navigate the internet by having the software read for them every text that appears on the screen. As can be seen in the screenshot above, the Blind User profile is ‘launched’ automatically once accessiBe detects that the user is using a screen-reader. This is a crucial functionality since obviously blind users aren’t able to locate the accessibility icon.
  2. The same goes for individuals that are using the keyboard instead of a mouse to navigate the web, both the motor-impaired and the blind. accessiBe detects and automatically enables keyboard navigation on your website.

On top of the predefined accessibility profiles, accessiBe’s interface allows for further adjustments that can be controlled specifically to allow a personalized browsing experience according to the user’s needs. Let’s look at these adjustments.

Accessibility Content Adjustments Explained

The content adjustments allow you to control every aspect of the written content on your website. The menu looks like this:

Each of these elements allows for granular control of the way content, or text, is presented. From altering the entire website’s text to a readable, sans-serif font that is easier to follow, to highlighting titles and links, to adjusting font size, the spacing between lines and letters and using a text magnifier that follows your cursor on the screen.

Here’s how it looks with Highlight Titles and Highlight Links turned on:

You can see all the links are highlighted with an orange bounding box while all titles are highlighted with a blue bounding box.

Accessibility Color Adjustments Explained

The color adjustments allows users to control every aspect of the color scheme on the website:

From adjusting contrast and saturation, to switching the entire website to a monochrome color scheme, to adjusting textual elements and background colors. Let’s look at a few examples.

Here’s a side-by-side of default appearance and the Dark Contrast adjustment turned on:

And here’s how it looks with the Monochrome adjustment turned on:

Accessibility Orientation Adjustments Explained

The orientation adjustments allow full control of ‘distractions’ that make it hard for individuals with epilepsy, ADHD, and cognitive disability to browse the web:

As such, the orientation adjustments allow users to mute sound, hide images, stop animations and additional ‘focus’ features such as an enlarged cursor and reading assistance that highlights the text being read.

Here’s how the Remove Images adjustment works:

accessiBe Back End Features

Unlike ‘accessibility plugins’ (more on that later) accessiBe provides a comprehensive back end treatment to your website – automated, AI-powered analysis of compatibility with accessibility requirements and fixing of the elements that need adjustment.

It should be noted that 70% of the WCAG compliance requirements deal with screen-reader and keyboard navigation compatibility and all these requirements are not answered by installing an accessibility interface widget that merely makes UI and design adjustments.

For example, an accessibility widget will enable you to enlarge the font on your website, to adjust the saturation or to highlight links, but it won’t enable a blind individual to differentiate between a shopping cart icon and a checkout icon, nor will it enable a motor impaired individual to easily navigate a menu.

This is a crucial consideration to make when choosing a web accessibility solution. Being WCAG compliant is a YES / NO situation. Your website is either compliant or it’s not, there is no middle ground here.

accessiBe’s back end features come to solve and answer all these compatibility issues that enable full screen-reader and keyboard navigation functionalities.

Screen Reader Compatibility Explained

Screen Reader is a software for blind individuals to use computers and browse the web. As the name suggests, the software reads aloud what is seen on the screen for blind individuals.

The screen reader software is installed on the computer. But in order for it to work with websites, the website needs to be compatible with the software. To achieve compatibility with screen reader software, WCAG requires that a website should adhere to a set of attributes called Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) that are installed within the website’s code, allowing it to ‘communicate’ with the screen reader.

Let’s take social icons as an example. We are all familiar with those icons – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – they are instantly recognizable for us visually. A screen reader software doesn’t actually ‘see’ elements on the screen, rather it scans the website’s code to understand what appears on the screen. As such, a Facebook icon code simply says ‘link’ and has the URL that directs the user when clicking the link.

So with a website that isn’t compatible with a screen reader, that doesn’t have ARIA tags implemented, the screen reader will read to the blind person “link” for the Facebook icon; not very helpful, is it?

When ARIA tags are implemented, additional information is added to the Facebook icon – and any other visual link on the website – that describes what is the link. So the screen reader will read to the blind person “Facebook link”.

It’s not difficult to imagine the scope and effort of the work needed in order to implement ARIA tags on your entire website.

Keyboard Navigation Compatibility Explained

Keyboard navigation means that motor-impaired individuals are using their computers only through their keyboard, rather than a mouse. Scrolling, clicking links and menu buttons, opening and closing tabs – everything is done using designated keys.

There are many issues relating to keyboard navigation as today’s websites are highly complex, layered with content elements, and react dynamically to user behavior. Any element of the website must be compatible to allow full keyboard navigation.

Let’s look at a popup as an example.

Popups can be triggered for a variety of reasons. For mouse users, it is a simple occurrence; you can bring the cursor to the area of the popup, click on one of the fields to input details or click the X to close the popup.

But how do you handle the popup using only the keyboard? How do you differentiate between ‘regular’ functionalities of the website and that of the popup? How do you ‘shift the focus’ of the keystrokes to a layered element? You need to allow unique keystrokes to operate the popup, keystrokes that are activated only when a popup appears.

It’s one example of the many challenges making your website compatible with keyboard navigation. The list of WCAG requirements for compatibility with keyboard navigation is a long one, and understandably so as it needs to enable motor-impaired individuals to navigate your website with the same ease as the rest of us using a mouse.

How accessiBe’s Background Processing Achieves Screen Reader and Keyboard Navigation Compatibility

Without getting too technical, what accessiBe does is scan the entire code of your website and adds keyboard functionalities and ARIA tags to various elements on your website directly. It won’t interfere with your site’s code, but rather add an additional ‘layer’.

accessiBe’s AI ‘learned’ all of ARIA’s tags and keyboard functionalities required by WCAG and when scanning your website’s code implements all the required adjustments to achieve full compliance.

How accessiBe Makes Menus Accessible

Menus are a good example for understanding what the accessiBe background processing does and the benefits it provides.

We recognize menus on websites instantly, because we saw thousands and thousands of them. We know how they look, we know what their functionality is, and we know where to hover and click in order to reach the various pages of the website.

But if you remember, we said that screen readers don’t ‘look’ at the screen, but rather scan the site’s code to understand structure, identify links and read them aloud with all the text that appears on the page.

So menus are coded as a list structure, because in a way they are. A screen reader will announce a menu as a list, which might be confusing for a blind user. Additionally, many menus have drop-down sub-menus, accessible via a hover or by clicking a little triangle. Without proper ARIA tagging, a screen reader will miss the sub-menu.

What accessiBe does is adding readable tags for every element in the menu so a screen reader will recognize and announce each element properly. The ‘list’ code structure will get a “menu” tag, and the sub-menu will get a tag for ‘sub-menu’, thus allowing the blind individual to utilize the full functionality of the website.

Additionally, accessiBe alternates the tags on-the-fly while the site is being browsed. Once a sub-menu has been opened, a tag that says “sub-menu open” will be added to indicate to the screen reader what has happened, and will be changed with the tag “sub-menu close” once the sub-menu has been closed.

Image Recognition

One of the key elements of accessibility compliance with screen readers is to provide accurate alternative descriptions for images, known as alt text.

accessiBe utilizes various image, object and character recognition technologies (OCR and Iris) to provide highly descriptive and accurate depictions of images displayed on the website. Without adding screen-reader compatible alt tags to images a blind individual would simply not be aware of the existence of images, and miss out on the information usually displayed on images.

Let’s look at the following banner images from an e-commerce website:

As you can see, valuable information is communicated via the images – sales and discounts – the kind of information any shopper would want to know.

This is the descriptive text that accessiBe’s AI assigned to these images, completely automated with no human intervention (from left to right):

  • Image contains: shopping,  shorts, woman, ashion; image text: extra 50% off shorts
  • Image contains: shopping, red top, woman, jeans, fashion; image text: 50% off bottoms
  • Image contains: shopping, blue jumpsuit, woman, fashion, bed, ; image text: 50% off jumpsuits & rompers
  • Image contains: shopping, shoes, ocean, woman, fashion; image text: 50% off shoes

Again, doing this kind of work for the hundreds to thousands of images that are displayed on every e-commerce website requires a lot of time and effort. accessiBe achieves this in a completely automated way, and every image added to your website instantly gets its alt text.

Comparison of accessiBe with Accessibility Plugins

There are many web accessibility plugins out there. They offer a ‘quick fix’ for ADA and WCAG compliance – add an accessibility menu and you’re done.

As tempting as it may sound, the distinction between an accessibility menu and being fully compliant must be made.

As we’ve mentioned earlier, there are two parallel tasks that need to handle in order to achieve ADA and WCAG compliance:

  • Front end – UI and design adjustments, achieved by the Accessibility Interface (the visible menu for content, font, color and orientation adjustments)
  • Back end – screen-reader and keyboard navigation compatibility, achieved by implementing ARIA tags and further code adjustments

Reminder: 70% of accessibility compliance requirements deal with back end adjustments, meaning, screen-readers, and keyboard navigation compatibility.

Accessibility plugins, whether free or paid, only answer the front-end requirements. Meaning, after installing an accessibility plugin, you are just 30% compliant. Since accessibility compliance is not a scale (you don’t ‘get points’ for making it halfway through) you’ll need to turn to an additional provider to do the back end work.

accessiBe, on the other hand, provides a full accessibility compliance solution, covering both UI and design requirements through the accessibility interface AND screen-reader and keyboard navigation compatibility requirements through it’s automated AI technology that analyzes and makes adjustments in the code-level of the website.

Benefits of Using accessiBe Over Accessibility Plugins

  • Achieving complete accessibility compliance
  • Dealing with a single provider, rather than two or more
  • Cost-efficiency (manual audit and remediation service are expensive)
  • Complete compatibility with screen-readers and keyboard navigation
  • Enabling true accessibility to individuals with disabilities

Comparison of accessiBe with Manual Accessibility Services

Manual accessibility services can help you achieve full accessibility compliance, but it comes with two major disclaimers:

  1. You’ll still need an additional solution for an accessibility interface, which the service companies don’t provide
  2. The compliance achieved is for the point in time the audit and remediation were performed. Let’s explain this point further.

Companies that offer a manual accessibility service assign a team of accessibility experts to do an audit of your website. The result of this audit is a lengthy document detailing all the accessibility faults that your website has. It is a valuable document as it gives you a precise depiction of what needs to be fixed in order to achieve compliance.

From here there are two possible paths:

You can either take the audit results to your development team and have them remediate your website accordingly.

Or, some of the service companies offer a remediation service, meaning, they’ll assign their own engineers to manually make the necessary changes in your website. Needless to say this extra service isn’t given for free.

In both cases, you are looking at a process that takes weeks if not months (depending on the number of pages your website has.)

Additionally, since it is a manual process done by experts, it comes with a hefty price tag.

But most importantly, the audit and remediation hold for the time they were done. Unless you have a 100% static website, meaning, you do not make any changes to your website – never add or remove products, never update content – the ‘effect’ of the audit and remediation fades away with time.

Since the process was manual, any changes you make to your website must be handled manually accessibility-wise. You added a new banner with a link to items on sale, you’ll need to go into the code and add ARIA tags. You added a new image, you’ll need to go into the code and add alt text compatible with screen-readers. And so on.

Some of the manual accessibility service companies offer maintenance services as well. They will periodically audit your website (manually) and provide a remediation document that will need to be implemented (manually) either by your development team or by theirs for an additional cost.

These costs add up. Having your website audited and remediated for compliance on an ongoing basis takes time, effort, and money. But you don’t have a choice. Being ADA and WCAG compliant is an ongoing task, since websites are dynamic and being updated regularly.

accessiBe, on the other hand, offers a 100% automated and ongoing compliance solution. The initial audit and remediation process is carried out – with no human intervention – in 48 hours (compared to weeks or months by a manual provider). Then, your website is scanned every 24 hours to identify and fix accessibility issues using accessiBe AI technology. Meaning, compliance maintenance is constantly carried out ‘in the background’ keeping you ADA & WCAG compliant at all times.

Which brings us to another crucial point regarding manual accessibility services. They make it extremely hard for you to scale up. Every business has a constant aim to grow, but with a manual accessibility service, scalability becomes a pain point. The more you grow the more time, effort and money you need to put in to remain compliant. You want to add another section to your website, you want to launch an additional website? Using a manual accessibility service will hold you back. You’ll need to account for additional time before going live to manually enable accessibility and additional funds. For fast-moving companies, time becomes a serious burden.

Since accessiBe offers an automated and ongoing accessibility solution, scalability is not an issue.

Benefits of Using accessiBe Over Manual Accessibility Services

  • Time-efficient
  • Cost-effective
  • 100% automated
  • Ongoing compliance
  • Infinite scale
  • Single provider for full compliance (front end and back end)

How to Check Your Web Accessibility Compliance Level

Before you get started on your path to being ADA & WCAG compliant it’s important to understand the current state of accessibility your website provides.

Obviously, if you’ve never taken any steps to make your website accessible to individuals with disabilities, there’s no need for this – your website isn’t accessible in any way.

This is actually highly important if you have taken steps to make your website accessible, like for example, installing one of the accessibility plugins. You might be under the impression that by doing so your website is both compliant and accessible to individuals with disabilities.

There’s a simple and quick way to face the accessibility reality.

accessiBe offers a free, automated compliance audit tool available online named aCe. It uses accessiBe AI technology to scan your site, detect accessibility issues and provide quite a detailed report on the various elements that impact your website’s accessibility, and those include:

  • General score
  • Clickables
  • Titles
  • Orientation
  • Menus
  • Graphics
  • Forms
  • Documents
  • Readability
  • Carousels
  • Tables

Each of these elements is given a score and some explanations to the specific issues that need attention within the context of these elements.

In addition to gaining a compliance audit with the remediation steps needed to be taken in order to fix these issues, aCe gives you a very clear idea of where you stand and what needs your attention in order to achieve compliance.

We gave it a try. We ran a website that has installed one of the accessibility plugins (which was recognized, by name, by the aCe audit tool) and the results cement the point that these plugins aren’t comprehensive enough of a solution for true ADA & WCAG compliance.

Here are the results:

As can be expected, the UI and design side got relatively high scores, due to the accessibility plugin installed on the website, but anything that has to do with back end compatibility with screen readers and keyboard navigation got a failing score.

Conclusion

accessiBe is an automated and comprehensive web accessibility solution that achieves ongoing compliance with ADA and WCAG regulations for your website.

It offers a unique combination of front end and back end compatibility, meaning, it provides an end-to-end solution for both user-facing accessibility interface, and compatibility with screen readers and keyboard navigation.

The solution offered by accessiBe is a no-touch, no-code, continuous compliance utilizing proprietary AI technology that audits and remediates your website.

It is by far one of the most affordable web accessibility solutions, starting at $490 for websites with up to 1,000 unique pages.

When compared to accessibility plugins, accessiBe’s offering is robust and comprehensive, delivering full compliance that plugins aren’t able to.

When compared to accessibility manual services, accessiBe offers a speedy and automated audit and remediation process compared to the lengthy, manual and highly expensive offering of the service companies. Additionally, accessiBe, unlike accessibility manual services, delivers ongoing compliance and the ability to scale with ease and speed.

The combination of AI-based audit and remediation, the most comprehensive accessibility interface on the market, ongoing compliance, scalability, and a highly affordable plan makes accessiBe stand out from the competition by offering a unique end-to-end solution for achieving ADA and WCAG compliance in a fast and simple way.

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

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