[New Section] Friendly Guide to Accessibility

Website accessibility is often treated like a monumental challenge, sometimes leading people to pay hundreds of dollars every year for a plugin that carries a ToS guaranteeing it won't meet the core need, while instilling fear that you have to use it anyway.

In reality, this largely comes down to some very simple considerations that can be easily illustrated.

• do not use browser-side page rendering (client-side javascript frameworks)
• use a theme that advertises specific features (RTL, color palette, light/dark, font size, etc.)
• avoid similar colors
• skimmed through WCAG 2.1 Level AA:
  • 1.1.1 - descriptive alt text
  • 1.2.x - seems like it would encourage site admins to simply remove content rather than transcribe old videos and reformat to include captions
  • 1.3.x - automatically handled by many themes
  • 1.4.x - high contrast and video player controls
  • 1.4.4 - don’t enable anything that forces browser font size
  • 2.1.x - don’t use things like AccessiBe that hijack user controls
  • 2.{2,3}.x - don’t use flashing *stuff … ever
  • 2.4.x - use a halfway decent theme
  • 2.5.x - don’t do weird shit
  • 3.x - make sure a default language is configured and a decent theme should handle the rest
  • 4.x - more things that are primarily dictated by the theme (Except for 1.2.x, nothing seems particularly exciting.)

Much of the important stuff can be easily understood using extreme examples, such as bright yellow text on a bright green background.