Re:The right tag for the job: why you should use semantic HTML
by jackfruitpeel on Monday June 07, 2021 @01:27AM
(#27419275)
One of the fallacies around accessibility is 'just for blind people' — there are all sorts of physical and mental disabilities humans suffer from, at various levels of severity (sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently). It's not just screenreaders—assistive technologies range from grandpa zooming into 8X screensize, to a paraplegic teen using a mix of keyboard nav and trackball.
Accessible design and development improves the lives of more people than you'd expect — and it goes a long way toward guaranteeing better usability for everyone. Gov.uk is a great example to this.
Anyway, if you're working on something with any type of scale, you should be hitting a11y standards as a matter of professional standards. Activist lawsuits in the US are doubling/tripling year over year, and you can expect EU legislation pretty soon too.
If you're just dicking around on a website with minimal traffic, it a matter of personal conscience and intended audience.
Accessible design and development improves the lives of more people than you'd expect — and it goes a long way toward guaranteeing better usability for everyone. Gov.uk is a great example to this.
Anyway, if you're working on something with any type of scale, you should be hitting a11y standards as a matter of professional standards. Activist lawsuits in the US are doubling/tripling year over year, and you can expect EU legislation pretty soon too.
If you're just dicking around on a website with minimal traffic, it a matter of personal conscience and intended audience.