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taz.de review

1. Accessibility

Contents

1. Problems
2. Accessibility Guidelines
3. Best Practice

Problems

I was able to identify several accessibility problems immediately. Some are more important than others, and there may be more that I was not able to recognise. Here are the ones I was able to find:

• Page does not validate against declared standard
• Some functionality relies on Javascript
• All page titles are the same.
• No navigation skip links are used.
• No meta navigation links are used.
• No explicit use of access keys.
• Abbreviations not marked up
• No use of roles.
• Images used to show text, without equivalent plain text.
• Images used as buttons, without alternative text.
• Non-colour-blind friendly design

Accessibility guidelines

I was unable to find a set of accessibility guidelines or policy statement on the taz.de website. If such a thing does not exist, it would be a good idea to write one up (including legal obligations) and make it public.

• See the Zugänglichkeitsrichtlinien für Web-Inhalte 1.0 for a standard set of guidelines.
• See the BBC accessibility guidelines for a good example of guidelines.
• See also Web ohne Barrieren.

Best practice: usable accessibility

Here are some suggested accessibility improvements for taz.de:

• Add standard role tags to key elements of the site. See A List Apart and the XHTML Role attribute definition.
• Add “skip to” links to skip to content (weiter zum Inhalt), skip to local navigation, skip to global navigation
• Ensure abbreviations are expandable. See A List Apart.
• Use access keys and provide an access key index page. See A List Apart and my access key index example.
• Use a meaningful, concise title. See Dive into Accessibility.
• Provide meta navigation links using the <link> tag.
• Link to articles using a dedicated link (“more”)
• Ensure there is a plain text equivalent for all non-text elements
• Ensure that non-descriptive links have title attributes. See an article by Jakob Nielsen
• Ensure nothing is distinguished by colour alone: test in black and white. Run through an online colour-blind filter.
• Link to an accessibility statement, outlining the accessibility features.
• If the default version is not completely accessible, provide links for alternative versions:
  • larger font sizes (see A List Apart)
  • high contrast version
  • white on black
  • user preference version (no styling)
  • linear version
  • text only

  This isn't particularly important if the design already caters for these things.

• Perform user testing width blind and visually impaired users.
• Run the site through an accessibility scanner to identify errors.
• Run a story on accessibility benefits of the site, most people don't realise how many people are mildly disabled and most people don't realise disabled people use the Internet.

A recommended introduction to accessibility is the book Dive into Accessibility