In the world that we are living today, accessibility becomes a priority for many companies, we can see that on cinema, malls and a lot of public spaces. In the Web, this concern lives on their websites, since many people need the internet to do virtually everything, from buying things or even to check their bank account. It is important we verify on our website if we are trying at least following some basic guidelines to help these users
Color and description: Some people cannot distinguish red and green(color blindness), and once I heard a story from a customer complaining that he could not distinguish the status of a product just looking by the status colors. The website used colors and some legend to separate the status. Well, colors are good, but it´s important that the description visible and easy to find. If the website is an online store, it´s even more important to put the description of a color of the product as well.
The ALT and TITLE tag: There is a property very important for Accessibility, it´s alt(alternative text) and title tag if you hover the mouse over an image a balloon will show up, this HTML tag is used by screen readers and helps blind or visually impaired to read the displayed text.
If you are Using Sitecore CMS you should remember to add the “Alt” property on the all the images in Media Library. There is also the “Title” property that you can fill, but a thread on Sitecore Developer Network shows us some difficulties to make the “Title” tag to show up. Some browsers do not make the fallback to “Alt” tag if your “title” is missing. In order to solve that I would recommend this thread and this post which has one file called “AddImageTitles.zip” that implements a pipeline that automatically adds the title for you.
Keyboard Shortcuts: Repetitive stress injury it´s common for many workers(tendinitis) that need to type all the time, the mouse is also a factor that contributes to that medication condition, that being said it´s important to remember the keyboard shortcuts. many websites or desktop system contains forms and without shortcuts makes difficult to a user that needs avoid the mouse click to navigate through the system.
So, next time you start a new Project, don´t forget those tips.
Sitecore Tips 