Designing an Accessible and Usable Blog

When you write your blog posts, there are a few basic things to keep in mind to ensure everyone can read your pages and posts.

Heading Text

Break the text on your pages and posts into sections and include a brief heading styled a “heading text” to make your post more usable to all readers and more accessible to screen readers. When you apply heading text to a page, use the styles in sequential order (Header 1, Header 2, etc.). Screen readers will read these headings in sequence.

Images

When you upload an image into your post that functions as content, use the alt-text (alternative text) field to provide a textual description. This ensures screen readers, assistive technologies used by people who are blind, will read the description. Read some helpful tips about writing alt-text.

Colors

Color is perceived differently by everyone. Monitors, mobile devices, and vision differences affect how color is perceived. For this reason, it is important to use colors with strong contrast between the foreground and background (including the color you’ve chosen for your links!).  Read more about color contrast and discover free tools to check the color contrast of your site.

Videos

Videos are a great way to enhance the ideas in a post but if they aren’t captioned, they aren’t accessible to your readers with hearing impairments or those viewing on a mobile device in a loud setting. Search for videos with closed captions on YouTube. If you are recording your own video, upload it to YouTube and edit the automatic captions for accuracy.