Individuals working on web accessibility can only do so much on their own, so get accessibility on the radar of organization managers. Leadership should demonstrate and enforce a commitment to accessibility, as it should be a team responsibility, rather than just yours alone.

Don't forget transcripts for video and audio. These will help blind users and low-vision users, deaf and hard-of-hearing users, people with ADHD, and people with audio-processing disorders. Transcripts also benefit search engines, people in quiet spaces, and people in a hurry.

Audio descriptions are necessary for making videos accessible. They narrate the crucial visual elements that would be necessary for understanding the plot without the ability to see the screen. They describe non-verbal cues like gestures, facial expressions, or eye contact.

Ensure text is readable in data visualizations and information graphics. Small text is generally harder to read, and should be avoided where possible. Make sure the text is not obstructed by other chart elements, and has sufficient contrast against its background.

Many live with the limitations of not understanding numbers and the impact that has on everyday life. Laura Parker's Accessible Numbers project offers guidance on how to design services and write content for people who need help with numbers. accessiblenumbers.com

The BBC's Accessibility Guide has several resources, including step-by-step instructions to using assistive technologies. The resource includes insight into several assistive technologies, including VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA, TalkBack, ClaroRead, and Dragon. bbc.github.io/accessibilit...

Avoid jargon whenever possible. When you have to use terms that might not be commonly known or used among your audience, explain what these terms mean. If you can't avoid a lot of specific terms, include a glossary of terms that users can refer to when needed.

Use icons, symbols, terms, and design patterns that are already familiar to users. People with cognitive disabilities benefit from common behavior and design patterns. An example is the standard convention for hyperlinks (underlined and blue for unvisited; purple for visited).

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.

Sharing Halloween pictures today? Don't forget to add alt text. Photo of your kid's great candy haul? Needs alt text. Photo of your kid' cute costume? Needs alt text. Photo of your neighbor's rad yard decorations? Needs alt text. Don't be a goblin. Add alt text.

Templates could be designed and coded according to web accessibility standards, but this won't ensure that the final product would be accessible. Content creators still need to know about key accessibility concepts, including alt text, link text, and proper headings.

Some people need to change the way text is displayed in order to read it. This includes changing size, spacing, font, color, and other properties. When people customize text, the text should re-flow so they don’t have to scroll horizontally to read. www.w3.org/WAI/perspect...

For any journalists, media folk, etc: A professor friend says some capstone students want to do a story on the importance of accessibility in designing/redesigning stadiums, given how much money is spent. He's looking for interested outlets. Feel free to share and spread the word. Thank you!

Hyperlink text should make sense when read out of context. Screen reader users can navigate from link to link, and can listen to links in a list. When navigating this way, only the link is read. So "click here" or "read more" won't make sense.

Your site's users need enough time to interact with content and fill out forms. People with disabilities such as blindness, low vision, dexterity impairments, and cognitive disabilities might need more time for things such as forms. Allow users to turn off or extend time limits.

In charts and data visualizations, avoid overwhelming people with information. Keep the design simple and clear. Avoid animations as they can be distracting and disorienting. If you must include some type of movement or animation, provide a way for people to turn it off.

People often have difficulty reading content when there isn’t sufficient contrast, so it's important to have high color contrast. TPGi’s free color contrast checker tool allows you to determine the contrast ratio of two colors by using an eye-drop tool. developer.paciellogroup.com/color-contra...

Intentional misspellings of words can confuse people. This includes people with cognitive and reading disabilities, and those learning the language. Depending on how much the word is misspelled, screen readers might not pronounce it like the actual intended word.

Many browsers allow font embedding, in which browsers download fonts and display text in those fonts. Beware: While most system-level fonts are designed for some level of readability, many custom-designed fonts aren't. Cute, clever, or funny fonts won't necessarily be readable.

Did you know each emoji has a coded description that gets read aloud by screen readers? This demo by Alexa Heinrich shows what happens when a screen reader encounters a post that uses an emoji to function as a bullet point. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSMs...

When possible, use simple and familiar data visualization techniques. Complex data visualizations can be visually appealing, but they can also be more difficult to understand. If a visualization gets overly complex, consider alternate chart types for the sake of understanding.

Some people replace the word "season" with "szn" or the word "please" with "plz." Not all sighted users will know what those spellings are supposed to mean, and many screen reader users won't, either. Many screen readers will read "szn" as S-Z-N and "plz" as P-L-Z.

People who want to make the web accessible need to understand the many different ways that people with disabilities use the web. This W3C resource offers a good introduction to how disabled people navigate the web, and barriers they commonly encounter. www.w3.org/WAI/people-u...

For people just getting introduced to accessibility concepts, the number of resources can be overwhelming for people who don't know where to start. These 10 tips from Lireo Designs can be a good way to introduce your team to the basics. www.lireo.com/10-ways-to-i...

Public sector sites and apps in European Union countries are subject to The EU Web Accessibility Directive. Among other things, the law requires accessibility statements for websites and mobile apps. To learn more, review the Frequently Asked Questions: web-directive.eu

Marcy Sutton's "Testing Accessibility" is a self-paced course designed to help you understand accessibility essentials, learn how to test existing apps, and bake in accessibility from the start. testingaccessibility.com

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.

Cognitive load refers to how much working memory or short-term memory someone is using at a time. Minimizing the cognitive load it takes to use your site makes it more accessible for people with cognitive disabilities. Limit what you're asking users to remember to use your site.

The same photo could appear on three different pages and require different alt text for each instance. The alt text for an image can vary, depending on the context of the image, its role on the page, and the intended message.

The #NoMouse Challenge is a global effort to raise awareness about accessible web design. Try using your website without a mouse. Use the keyboard instead. Is it possible to access all features and operate all buttons, sliders, and other controls? nomouse.org

"Introduction to Web Accessibility" is a free course designed for people of all roles and all experience levels, so regardless of your background, there's something you can learn here. www.edx.org/course/web-a...

Screen readers are an assistive technology that interprets the information on a screen and translates it to either synthesized speech or Braille output. This helps blind people, people with low vision, and people with cognitive or learning disabilities. www.afb.org/blindness-an...

Today's AWS outage is causing many sites to load slower than usual. That means images might not be loading as fast as they normally do. But if you've remembered to add alt text to your images, your users will still be able to get the context and content of your images on your site.

Vestibular disorders affect people's balance as well as their visual perception of their world around them. Don't make animations, sliders, videos, or rapid movement start automatically, as autoplaying elements could trigger a bad reaction in people who have vestibular disorders.

For all of you taking or sharing pictures from #NoKings: If you're in the position of needing to write alt text to describe an image for your feed or your publication, and you feel overwhelmed, don't worry. If you're new to writing alt text, this resource from Veronica Lewis can help you out.

A lot of big breaking news stories involve visuals, such as timelines of events, photos, memes, and screen shots. All of those images need alt text. Without alt text, screen reader users are left out. Today, the big event that is image-heavy and all over social media is the #NoKings protests.

You don't necessarily need to say "image of" in your alt text for users to know it's an image. Screen readers will announce that it's an image. But it can help readers to specify if it's a hand-drawn image, Polaroid, infographic, screenshot, chart, map, diagram, or so on.

A lot of big breaking news stories involve visuals, such as timelines of events, photos, memes, and screen shots. All of those images need alt text. Without alt text, screen reader users are left out. Today, the big event that is image-heavy and all over social media is the #NoKings protests.

One way sighted people can determine what to put in alt text: Imagine you sent the post or article to a friend, and the image didn't load. What would someone need to know to get the equivalent experience and context? This will help you identify the important details.

Color contrast affects readability on the web and in print. It is especially important for users who are low vision or for users who are colorblind. Good color contrast means all users can see your content no matter the device they’re using or the lighting of their surroundings.

When creating PDFs, avoid using "Print to PDF." A screen reader user may still be able to access the text of PDFs created this way, but heading structure, alternative text, and any other tag structure will be lost. Using "Save As" or "Export" can preserve these tags.

The same photo could appear on three different pages and require different alt text for each instance. The alt text for an image can vary, depending on the context of the image, its role on the page, and the intended message.

Equal Access Public Media (@equalaccesspublicmedia.org) is working to make news more accessible to people who have trouble accessing news because of disabilities, use of alternative communications, different ways of accessing the internet, or low literacy levels. equalaccesspublicmedia.org

#A11y is another great hashtag to find accessibility-related resources. Besides using #accesibilidad to find accessibility-related content in Spanish and #accessibilité to find accessibility-related content in French, what are your go-to hashtags to find non-English content on accessibility?

The hashtag #accessibility allows you to find lots of accessibility-related resources on Twitter and LinkedIn. To find accessibility resources in Spanish, use the hashtag #accesibilidad. The hashtag #accessibilité helps you find resources in French.

Don’t stuff your alt text with keywords without context. If your alt text is just a collection of keywords, it will just sound like a gibberish string. It won’t describe what’s actually in the image, and won't help a blind user get a context or content of the image.

Screen reader users can navigate from heading to heading. If HTML headings are used correctly, this allows users to get a basic outline of content and find the information they’re looking for. The highest heading level is <h1> and <h6> is the lowest. developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...

Automatic captions make it difficult to watch videos because the viewer is forced to decipher misspelled or mistranslated words that appear in a string of text without any punctuation. These can be distracting and disorienting. Always edit your captions before publishing.

Screen readers are software applications that convert on-screen content into audio, reading aloud what’s displayed on your laptop or mobile screen. In this blog post, @tetralogical.com debunks common myths about screen readers. tetralogical.com/blog/2025/10...

In presentations, talk at a moderate pace and enunciate. Pause between phrases, sentences, and questions so people can read the captions and respond. Have speakers take turns and state their name before speaking. This helps everyone, including people captioning in real time.