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Web Accessibility

When we say that something is accessible, it often refers to the price of an item or service. The term accessible in many cases implies that something is cheap. Accessible can also be a person which is open and accommodating. In the world of websites and applications, the term accessibility is viewed in a different way. It refers to adjustments to make the sites easier to use for people with disabilities or challenges. We have all probably already encountered tools for changing contrast,  typography, etc. when using the websites of government institutions. Even without additional information, it is clear to us how these tools are used and who they are intended for.

With the adoption of the Law on the Accessibility of Websites and Software Solutions for Mobile Devices of Public Sector Bodies of the Republic of Croatia (NN 17/19), Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications of Public Sector Bodies was transposed into national legislation. All public sector bodies were obliged to ensure the accessibility of their websites and to determine the compliance status of their online resources in the form of an Accessibility Statement.

The law encouraged domestic institutions to adapt, including those institutions with whom Slobodna domena cooperates. In the case of kulturanova.hr and havc.hr, it was about projects that were realised long before the EU directive was on the horizon, and therefore it was necessary to resort to a specially programmed solution and adjustments to the program code in order to implement web accessibility. Both interventions were of medium size, not quite trivial. Along with the adaptation of the pages, help was also needed with the assessment of the compliance status and with the writing of the Accessibility Statement. That experience led us to the decision to start taking care of accessibility on all our future projects. We have developed a module that we can easily apply to the online solutions we are working on, often retrogradely. Such is, for example, the case with our website, slobodnadomena.hr or with cesi.hr, mmh.hr, ckim.hr, mvinfo.hr etc. Accessibility as a concept has expanded to a wider field than that covered by public sector bodies. Gradually, non governmental associations, companies and media also introduced this practice. Although the law does not oblige them to do so, many websites try to be accessible to people with disabilities or difficulties.

The reference document in the field of accessibility is certainly CARNET's Guidelines for Ensuring Digital Accessibility, which cover the most important aspects of the issue in a clear and understandable manner. The guidelines are intended primarily for professionals and persons in institutions responsible for assessing the status of accessibility. Just as it is enough for the average motor vehicle driver to know how to interpret a sign for parking in a space reserved for the disabled, without going into details about how wide and how positioned that space should be, the same is true of web accessibility. The average website visitor may perceive the settings management tool as “the one for changing the font and colour”, without going into all the details of this, realistically more complex, issue. The topic of accessibility is broad, and we have learned a lot from the resources available through The A11Y Project.

We have incorporated the sublimation of everything we know about accessibility into our everyday web design practices. We follow the logic that less is more, and therefore some of the adjustments we make are not visible to average users. For example, our accessibility settings tool does not offer an option to increase the font size on the screen, but pages behave well if the font is enlarged. People who need larger fonts to use a site face this problem every day. They know how to enlarge the fonts on their devices. They do not need a custom font enlargement tool built into the site, but they need the page not to fall apart when they enlarge the fonts using that functionality on their device.

Explicit options that we have built into the accessibility module include changing the font to one adapted to people with reading difficulties, changing the contrast from positive to negative, and emphasising links by underlining them. Everything else is “invisible to the eye” at first glance. However, in order for the site to be truly accessible, it is necessary to introduce a whole series of additional mechanisms. For example, pages should be tested with automated readers for the blind and visually impaired. It is necessary to ensure that the HTML code of the site is semantically understandable, and that photographs and illustrations are also described in text. Good practice is to enable navigation on the site using the keyboard, without using a mouse or touch screen.

Although we have worked a lot on accessibility, and have earned something thanks to the EU directive, although we take care that our work is in accordance with the recommendations, it should be said that in Croatia the change in legislation has automatically brought about large and important changes to the domestic web space. Many have jumped on that bandwagon. Significant funds and energy have been invested. While investigating the problem, learning about it, we came to the conclusion that in some other EU countries, adjustments are left to happen more slowly, through the roll-out principle. Institutions of the similar rank in these countries as a first step simply determined the degree of their (in)adjustment, and made site changes at the moment when their major update or redesign was being done. This approach is recommended for websites that need to make major changes in order to adapt them in the spirit of the Directive, when it is easier and more logical to implement them through a new project. It is essential that the need for pages to be accessible to people with disabilities and challenges becomes or remains an element of every future specification, every public call, every brief, every new web. This is the right direction.