Accessibility

My work prioritizes accessibility, which also improves usability and search engine optimization. Contact me if your organization needs help with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance. My WCAG (Level AA) Accessibility Evaluations start at $800 per site.

Making WordPress Accessible

screenshot of International Association of Accessibility Professionals

WordPress Accessible Theme Development: Scott Marlow

The mission of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) is to define, promote and improve the accessibility profession through networking, education and certification in order to enable the creation of accessible products, content and services.

Automattic routinely makes accessibility improvements to WordPress software and its default-installed themes, like TwentyEleven and TwentyTwelve – two of my preferred mobile responsive, parent themes. Browser makers and the W3C also make routine improvements.

For example, W3C recently deprecated the “hgroup” tag that allowed multiple h1/h2 headers in site mastheads – this created semantic issues for site visitors using Assistive Technology devices.

It’s highly unlikely for any theme to be 100% accessible, but there are improvements that can be made. Here’s an abbreviated list of accessibility features that we integrated into IAAP’s TwentyTwelve child theme:

  • removed auto-hyphenation
  • reduced main line width to 80 characters
  • added 2 visual identifiers to link hover state
  • increased all text color to minimum hex value of #666666
  • removed title attributes from all links
  • removed target attribute (opening new windows/tabs) from all links
  • added Post Title to ‘read more/continue reading links’
  • properly marked up Posts on the post page as H2s, instead of H1s

Additional usability improvements for low-vision site visitors included:

  • convenient font-resizer
  • high-contrast toggle button
  • high-contrast reverse link hover state
  • a “visual change” to links that exceeds a 4.6 to 1 contract and an additional visual marker (an underline) to insure a proper visual difference for the visually disabled to actually see links

Joe Dolson’s WP Accessibility Plugin is a convenient tool to improve accessibility for many themes.

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HTML to WordPress CMS Conversion

screenshot Hearing Loss Association of Washington

WordPress CMS Development: Scott Marlow

My latest nonprofit website conversion for the Hearing Loss Association of Washington.

HLA needed to migrate their award-winning design from a static HTML site to an easy-to-edit Content Management System. Following the existing branding elements, I converted the design into a mobile responsive website that can now be easily edited by the nonprofit’s volunteers.

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Working Well With WordPress

SightConnection screenshot

Graphic Design: David Owen Hastings
WordPress Theme Development: Scott Marlow

Living well with vision loss requires accessible websites. My latest WordPress project for SightConnection (formerly Community Services for the Blind) includes a high contrast design by David Owen Hastings, convenient font-resizing, as well as a text-only stylesheet.

The text-only stylesheet replaces a previous text-version of the website, which hurt search engine rankings by publishing duplicate content to the same domain.

Scott Marlow came to us upon a recommendation of our graphic designer, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the work he did for us! Scott worked closely with us to not only develop our new website at SightConnection.org, but also to teach us all the inner workings. As a not-for-profit organization we are always concerned about costs, but under Scott’s guidance the project came in on time and on budget. The launch went smoothly and we love our new website! We look forward to working with Scott on other projects as we implement our new brand and look. I highly recommend Scott to anyone looking to develop and implement a website.
June Mansfield, President/CEO
SightConnection

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