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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 and improve 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.
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 and improve 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.
572 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 8, 2025
I did not get what I wanted from this book. You should read it.
Let me explain. When I came to this book, I was coming from another book (Web Accessibility Cookbook), which is a fine book, but I found it difficult to engage with. I didn't read the whole thing, so I won't give any criticism, I just found the format very list-y, and I just couldn't engage with it properly. Anyway, I came to Practical Web Accessibility kind of expecting to find the centerpiece to be a description of WAI-ARIA, and other related things like that. In point of fact, WAI-ARIA plays a very small role in this book. It does recommend roles and attributes now and then to address a particular problem, but there's no high level overview of WAI-ARIA as a whole.
What _is_ there:
* a pretty comprehensive overview of the current state of accessibility, including some information about the legal and regulatory environment and consequences
* a lot of references out to authoritative sources (WCAG gets a lot more love than WAI-ARIA, and many sections are cross-referenced to specific WCAG success criteria)
* clear descriptions of who is affected by accessibility issues, how, and what can be done about it
* a lot of recommendations for tools you can use to guide your own website on its accessibility journey
* a structure framework you can use for evaluating and improving the accessibility of websites
This is not a book for "developers", although there is information in it that developers will find valuable. This is a book for stakeholders, particularly those on the ownership side who have a responsibility not to discriminate, deliberately or by omission. It has explanations of various accessibility concerns, organized by particular access needs (_e.g.,_ one chapter covers blindness, another cognitive disability, etc.), ways to identify and adress them, loads of good advice, and it's all written in a way that's going to be accessible to non-technical users. It covers a fair bit of ground that I would not have identified as a11y issues before reading the book (clear, concise writing, avoiding deceptive or manipulative design choices), but makes fair arguments to support these.
The book is organized in several sections. First an introductory chapter, then a series of chapters on particular accessibility needs, that roughly tends to proceed from more-concrete (blindness) to more-abstract (mental health). Then there's a chapter on the particular problems of email, a chapter with recommendations for outsourcing your accessibility (I can sum that chapter up for you quickly: "don't"), a chapter that gathers and expands on the tool recommendations scattered throughout earlier chapters, and finally a closing thoughts chapter which discusses current developments, like the next version of the WCAG standard and some legal precedents that matter.
This organized-by-access-needs structure does mean that there's a fair bit of repeated information, as solutions for one problem often overlap with solutions for another kind of problem, and this isn't great, if you're reading it from start to end like I did, but I suspect it's very good indeed if you're trying to solve a particular problem and don't want to have to cross-reference to a bunch of other chapters.
If I have one main criticism of this book, it is that I _really could have used_ a more detailed treatment of WAI-ARIA. But that's fine, I'm sure I can find that online and supplement my knowledge. I'm quite glad I read this book. Accessibility is a much bigger space than I imagined. Now I know it—and I feel ready to make immediate improvements in my own projects. This book has earned a permanent spot on my shelf.
Let me explain. When I came to this book, I was coming from another book (Web Accessibility Cookbook), which is a fine book, but I found it difficult to engage with. I didn't read the whole thing, so I won't give any criticism, I just found the format very list-y, and I just couldn't engage with it properly. Anyway, I came to Practical Web Accessibility kind of expecting to find the centerpiece to be a description of WAI-ARIA, and other related things like that. In point of fact, WAI-ARIA plays a very small role in this book. It does recommend roles and attributes now and then to address a particular problem, but there's no high level overview of WAI-ARIA as a whole.
What _is_ there:
* a pretty comprehensive overview of the current state of accessibility, including some information about the legal and regulatory environment and consequences
* a lot of references out to authoritative sources (WCAG gets a lot more love than WAI-ARIA, and many sections are cross-referenced to specific WCAG success criteria)
* clear descriptions of who is affected by accessibility issues, how, and what can be done about it
* a lot of recommendations for tools you can use to guide your own website on its accessibility journey
* a structure framework you can use for evaluating and improving the accessibility of websites
This is not a book for "developers", although there is information in it that developers will find valuable. This is a book for stakeholders, particularly those on the ownership side who have a responsibility not to discriminate, deliberately or by omission. It has explanations of various accessibility concerns, organized by particular access needs (_e.g.,_ one chapter covers blindness, another cognitive disability, etc.), ways to identify and adress them, loads of good advice, and it's all written in a way that's going to be accessible to non-technical users. It covers a fair bit of ground that I would not have identified as a11y issues before reading the book (clear, concise writing, avoiding deceptive or manipulative design choices), but makes fair arguments to support these.
The book is organized in several sections. First an introductory chapter, then a series of chapters on particular accessibility needs, that roughly tends to proceed from more-concrete (blindness) to more-abstract (mental health). Then there's a chapter on the particular problems of email, a chapter with recommendations for outsourcing your accessibility (I can sum that chapter up for you quickly: "don't"), a chapter that gathers and expands on the tool recommendations scattered throughout earlier chapters, and finally a closing thoughts chapter which discusses current developments, like the next version of the WCAG standard and some legal precedents that matter.
This organized-by-access-needs structure does mean that there's a fair bit of repeated information, as solutions for one problem often overlap with solutions for another kind of problem, and this isn't great, if you're reading it from start to end like I did, but I suspect it's very good indeed if you're trying to solve a particular problem and don't want to have to cross-reference to a bunch of other chapters.
If I have one main criticism of this book, it is that I _really could have used_ a more detailed treatment of WAI-ARIA. But that's fine, I'm sure I can find that online and supplement my knowledge. I'm quite glad I read this book. Accessibility is a much bigger space than I imagined. Now I know it—and I feel ready to make immediate improvements in my own projects. This book has earned a permanent spot on my shelf.
May 17, 2024
Even better than the first edition (still incredibly biased).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews