Top 10 accessibility mistakes
Here’s a nice top ten of things not to do when building accessible sites:
- Don’t use verbose ALT text. ALT text for information-based images
should be short and succinct. Decorative images should never have ALT
text. - Don’t use random characters, such as vertical bars, to separate links
- Don’t insert text into form fields
- Don’t use access keys as they can override keyboard shortcuts for screen readers
- Don’t use table summaries (unless there isn’t sufficient information provided about the table on the page)
- Don’t forget content organisation. Structure text properly with short
paragraphs, headings, lists and plain and simple language. - Don’t worry too much about writing accessibility help pages since they won’t really be read
- Don’t agonise over acronyms and abbreviations
- Don’t change the tab order (unless you have a very good reason)
- Don’t forget to listen with a screen reader
