Avoid the seven deadly sins

Below are proposals of seven measures you should prioritise in terms of the website’s content and seven remedies to prioritise in terms of the website’s technical aspects. Remember that the Web Accessibility Directive contains many more points than the ones listed below.

Website content

• Ensure that headings are correctly formatted using H1 for the main heading, H2 for subheadings and so forth.
• Ensure there are no empty paragraphs or empty headings on the webpages. People sometimes think it looks more attractive to have two line breaks instead of one, for example, but this is not good in terms of coding.
• Images and illustrations should have an alternative text (known as an alt-text) that describes what is being shown in the image.
• Design links to be informative and comprehensible.
• Fields to be completed in web forms should have accompanying descriptions that help the user understand what information they should fill in for that field.
• Videos should have subtitles that meet accessibility requirements.
• Documents should also meet accessibility requirements.

Read more about how to create accessible content

Technical aspects of the website

You only need to familiarise yourself with the points below if you are technical responsible for a web based system, such as content management system or learning management system.

• Ensure the code validates
• Develop the website in line with a standard, rather than a web browser
• Specify the different roles of each part of the page in the code
• Create a logical tab order so visitors can use the keyboard to navigate the website
• Specify the main language of the website in the code
• Do not use frames
• Do not use tables for the layout

Further help with prioritising

One tip is to prioritise problems at WCAG level A before moving on to level AA.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, see level A and AA - w3c.org

Form a working group with different skills

It can be a good idea to form a working group composed of people with different skills. Such a group could consist of, for example, a website manager, content creator and IT technician/developer. You can then divide up the work between you.

Tip for a method to remedy issues

By focusing on one issue at a time, your accessibility work will feel more feasible and efficient. You will find that you manage to review quite a few webpages in one hour if you simply focus on one issue at a time.

1. Choose an accessibility issue that you feel is simple to remedy, for example ensuring that all headings are correctly formatted with H1, H2 and so on.
2. Review the entire website, page by page, and remedy the issue.
3. Next, choose a new problem and remedy it on every page of your website.