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#MyFriendAlexa - Blogger's Checklist For Accessibility

Blogger's Checklist For Accessibility - Vibhu & Me
 Accessibility is still new for many people out there. Last week, in my team many new candidates joined and it was my job to give them the introduction of Accessibility and why it is important. With their question, I could sense that we still need to see Accessibility from a more human outlook. Accessibility brings few of our known ones one level up. Those people who are behind in the race of life due to disabilities caused by any accident, side effect of treatment or due to sudden insensibility of limbs. Besides permanent disabilities, the severity and type of difficulty  an individual experiences can vary throughout a person’s life. For example, vision related issues.

As a software person and a project manager, accessibility is now very close to my heart. It is my bread and butter these days, to be honest. Day and night I think about accessibility and ways to address accessibility issues in digital information. However, as a blogger, I feel it is also my responsibility to talk about the value of accessibility among writers who mostly post their content online. If you have read my previous post on accessibility and by now know what is accessibility and why we as bloggers should make our blogs accessible, this post might be a repetition of information for you. But I feel everyone needs a checklist to keep things handy and in mind when designing their work. So here is the blogger's checklist for accessibility. 

Text of the post :
  • Should be of sufficient size
  • Should explain acronyms the first time used in a post  
  • Should follow a balanced color contrast with background
  • Should not have any color specific instructions. (Avoid text like "click red button below") 
Hyperlinks/Link in the post
  • Should be meaningful when read out of context
  • Should not be like "Click here", "Here" and "More" but more explanatory 
  • Should open new page in the same window
Images in the post
  • Should have alt text and title
  • Should not be text heavy. Except branding, no text in the image
Audio in the post
  • Should have a transcript
Video in the post
  • Should have a transcript
  • Should have captions (MUST)
Multimedia in the post
  • Should give option to stop, pause and hide
  • Auto running text should not repeat more than 3 times within 30 seconds.
Listing in the post
  •  Should follow unordered or ordered lists to identify bullet points (use your blog's editor to make bullet points)
Clickable area in the post
  • Should be wide enough to be able to set target.
While designing accessible posts, a key thing to keep in mind is to respect your end user’s preferences and requirements, and I guess it is not much work to focus on above points when you write your next post. A few simple steps and your post is accessible automatically. Let us all help in building this digital world for Everyone.

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