What is A11y?

What does a11y mean?

A11y (pronounced like ally) is a shortened way to talk about accessibility.

It refers to the social media movement and advocacy for more accessibility in tech, development, social media, and beyond. It is often used to refer to the auditing process or to refer to a scoring matrix to assess a user experience of a website.  The “11” used represents the number of letters between the letter “a” and the letter “y” in “accessibility”.

Learn about the 4 Core Principles of Web Accessibility

Learn more about The A11y Project

What is A11y and what does it mean? The four core principles of web accessibility (A11y) dictate that a site must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust in order to be accessible.

The basics of website accessibility

Good web accessibility means that all visitors – regardless of ability – have a seamless experience on your website. Inclusion and experience optimization lay at the heart of website accessibility. 

Visuals

Great accessibility takes into account visual elements and the degree to which they are required for a good website experience. This can include color, images, and video. If you have poor use of or insufficient details about visuals, that impacts the user experience.

Structure

The way information and elements are laid out on your site matters for accessibility. Website elements need to be laid out in away that is easy and logical for humans and screen readers to understand and follow.

Control

A website someone does not have control over is not an accessible website. Automatic movement, such as animation or scrolling, disrupts and distracts from someone interacting with the site in the way they prefer. This is why human testing is vital when it comes to accessibility. 

Technology

Optimizing a site for search engines and screen readers – without the use of quick overlay tools – makes a site more accessible overall. This can include alternative text, proper use of ARIA attributes, and clean semantic code. 

A webinar promotional graphic titled “WEBINAR REVIEW: Understanding WCAG for Website Remediation” by Kristina Louise Treadwell. On the right side, a smiling woman wearing white headphones gestures expressively while video chatting on a laptop, with a notebook and pen in front of her. The top of the image includes the logo “A11y Pro Geeks”

Why is web accessibility important?

Think about how popular, ubiquitous, and important the web is to our every day lives. We rely on it for communication, entertainment, information, and so much more. If someone is denied fair and equal access to the internet due to circumstances outside their control – such as a disability – is that fair?

Disabilities include:

  • Blindness or low vision
  • Learning disabilities
  • Cognitive disabilities
  • Deafness or hearing loss
  • Speech disabilities
  • Physical disabilities

Website accessibility also goes hand-in-hand with search engine optimization. Good accessibility can positively affect ranking scores over time.

people in the US live with some type of disability that affects their lives. (source)
of websites are  not currently fully accessible to people with disabilities. (source)
is the number of ADA lawsuits filed in 2023 in the US. (source)
was the average amount of an ADA settlement in 2020. (source)

Frequently Asked Questions

There are many ways to test the accessibiity of a site. Automated tools can get you started with basic information. You can conduct an audit or hire someone to audit the site for you.

Accessibility is a spectrum. It is hard to declare that a website is 100% accessible. But it can check most or all boxes on lists of guidelines like WCAG. A site may be accessible tot most people, but still fail to meet legal web accessibility standards. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is the primary law that governs website accessibility for people with disabilities. The ADA requires that any public-facing website be usable and accessible by people with disabilities, including those using assistive technology.

Ideally, you would pay your designers, developers, content writers, and marketers to include accessiblity in all the work they do. It can be more expensive in the long run to hire a specialist to come in later and remediate for accessibility. Depending on the speed, experience, and amount of work, accessibility specialists charge various amounts.

Web accessibility affects all people. People with color blindness, epilepsy, physical disabilities, anxiety, and ADHD can struggle to use an inaccessible website. However, there are many instances in which neurotypical people can be better served by an accessible website. For example, a neurotypical person who just wants to watch a video on your site in public without sound may be frustrated if you don’t have captions available.

In the long run it can be more timely and costly to put off accessibility to the end of your project. Baking accessibility steps into your build project means fewer things get overlooked. It is wrong to de-prioritize certain people who may want to use your site. And if you launch an inaccessible site with the goal of fixing it later, you can still be sued in the time it takes you to do that.

Accessibility requirements and guidelines may restrict your choices when it comes tto design. But the whole point is to make your content easier to interact with. Color contrast guidelines make more harmonious and easy to see color combinations. Text size guidelines make text easier to read. A good designer can definitely utilize rules of accessibility alongside rules of aesthetics.