Web accessibility is largely about developing web design, tools and content that can be used by all people.  It involves making use of tools and technologies developed to aid the understanding, perfection, navigation, contribution, and interaction of a person with a disability on the website. Integrating accessibility is a crucial aspect of user experience. It must be built into the web development and design process. Companies like AccessiBe have emerged over the years that allow people to create accessible digital properties with the help of AI.

AccessiBe talks about web accessibility components and their implementation

It is important for multiple components of web development and interaction work together for the purpose of making digital properties accessible to people with disabilities. Such components include content, developers, authoring tools, and evaluation tools. The content basically implies to accessible to people with disabilities, such as:

• Markup or code that defines presentation, structure, and more
• Natural information like text, images, and sounds
• Media players, web browsers, and other “user agents”
• Assistive technology that may include switches, alternative keyboards, scanning software, screen readers, and more
• User experience, knowledge, and in certain cases, adaptive strategies using the web

While talking about web accessibility components, developers include designers, coders, authors, and more, include developers with disabilities and users who contribute content. Authoring tools, on the other hand, implies to software that creates websites. Evaluation tools essentially include CSS validators, HTML validators, web accessibility evaluation tools, and more.

To create accessible web content, authoring tools and evaluation tools have to be used efficiently.  The ‘users’ use media players, browsers, assistive technologies, or other “user agents” to consume, engage and interact with the content. There is a good level of interdependencies between the components in this situation. This basically means that all the components have to work together in order for the web to be accessible.

If an accessibility feature is implemented in a certain component, other components are also more likely to implement them. For example, if web browsers, media players, and/or assistive technologies support an accessibility feature, users are more like to demand it and the developers also have greater odds of implementing it into their content. Similarly, if an authoring tool makes a feature easy to implement, most developers try to implement it in their content.

Conversely, in case an accessibility feature is not implemented in one component, the motivation for the other components to implement it less as it does not guarantee to result in an accessible user experience on the whole. For instance, a developer is unlikely to implement an accessibility feature that most browsers or assistive technologies do not implement in a consistent manner or is not supported by authoring tools.

AccessiBe has launched its AI based tool that scans and attempts to remediate websites in real-time, while trying to achieve ADA compliance through implementing WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Being an industry leader when it comes to web accessibility, this company provides different AI-Powered solutions for testing and remediating web accessibility. Through them, one can gain a better understanding of web accessibility components.