Guideline Implementation

Tutorial 2 of 4

Guideline Implementation: Applying WCAG to Your HTML

1. Introduction

In this tutorial, we will cover the practical application of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in your HTML code. Our goal is to make your web content more accessible and user-friendly for everyone, including those with disabilities.

You will learn how to:
- Understand and apply WCAG principles to your HTML code
- Improve your website's accessibility
- Validate your web content against the WCAG

Prerequisites:
- Basic knowledge of HTML

2. Step-by-Step Guide

Understanding WCAG

The WCAG is a set of recommendations for making web content more accessible. It covers a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible to people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these.

Applying WCAG to HTML

We can implement WCAG principles in HTML by using semantic HTML tags, providing text alternatives for non-text content, ensuring sufficient contrast, etc.

Best practices and tips:

  • Always use semantic HTML tags as they provide important information about the content.
  • Provide text alternatives for non-text content like images.
  • Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background colors.

3. Code Examples

Example 1: Using semantic HTML tags

Semantic HTML tags provide important information about the content. They clearly describe their meaning in both human and machine language.

<!-- Non-semantic -->
<div id="main">...</div>

<!-- Semantic -->
<main>...</main>

The <main> tag is a semantic HTML tag that represents the dominant content of the body of a document. This helps screen readers and other assistive technologies understand the content better.

Example 2: Providing text alternatives

We can use the alt attribute in the <img> tag to provide a text alternative for images.

<img src="image.jpg" alt="Description of the image">

The alt attribute describes the content of the image. This is useful for screen readers and when the image cannot be displayed.

4. Summary

In this tutorial, we have covered the practical application of WCAG guidelines in HTML. We learned about semantic HTML tags, text alternatives for non-text content, and ensuring sufficient contrast.

Next steps for learning:
- Learn about ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) to make advanced web content and applications more accessible.
- Validate your web content using tools like the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Additional resources:
- WCAG Guidelines
- W3C Markup Validation Service

5. Practice Exercises

  1. Convert the following non-semantic HTML code into semantic HTML:
    ```html

...

```

  1. Write an alt description for the following image tag:
    html <img src="logo.png">

Solutions:
1. Semantic HTML:
```html

...

...
...

```

  1. alt description:
    html <img src="logo.png" alt="Company logo">

Continue practicing by converting more non-semantic HTML into semantic HTML and writing alt descriptions for your images. Remember, accessibility is not a feature - it's a necessity!