Web accessibility is essential for people with disabilities and useful for all. Learn about the impact of accessibility and the benefits for everyone in a variety of situations.
Video on Understandable Content
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Transcript
Instead of saying: "To postulate a conceit more irksome than being addressed in sesquipedalian syntax is adamantine", it is better to say: "Being spoken to in unnecessarily long and complicated language is a pain". Yet many websites lack structuring using headings, lists, and separations. Or they use overly complex language, jargon, and unexplained acronyms. It makes them difficult and unappealing for many people, including non-native speakers, and makes them unusable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities. Web accessibility: Essential for some, useful for all.
Media player
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Transcript
Description: Two people are trying to follow instructions on a cooking website using lots of text with no illustrations or structure.
Instead of saying: "To postulate a conceit more irksome than being addressed in sesquipedalian syntax is adamantine", it is better to say: "Being spoken to in unnecessarily long and complicated language is a pain".
Description: They are looking up words in a dictionary to understand the recipe.
Yet many websites lack structuring using headings, lists and separation . Or they use overly complex language, jargon, and unexplained acronyms.
Description: They are confused and frustrated by the website.
It makes them difficult and unappealing to use for many people, including non-native speakers, and makes them unusable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities.
Description: They search and find a different cooking website with more structured text and illustrations.
Web accessibility: Essential for some, useful for all.
Content must be easy to follow and understand for many users. For most content, this means simply avoiding overly complex sentences and jargon, and providing clear layout and design. For some complex content such as medical information, separate, easy-to-read information may be necessary.
Who depends on this feature?
People with learning disabilities who cannot understand complex sentence structures and vocabulary.
People with cognitive disabilities who have difficulty focusing on long passages of dense text.
What are the additional benefits?
Content is more usable for people with lower language skills, such as people who are not fluent in the language of the website and people with low literacy.
Content is easier to understand by users who are not familiar with the topic.
Content is easier to skim, and get an overview of the information.
What needs to happen for this to work?
Avoid overly complex words, jargon, and acronyms, or provide explanations when they need to be used. Provide structure using headings, lists, and spacing. Provide illustrations that clarify the content, when helpful. Provide clear layout and design with consistent orientation and navigation cues.
The following preferences control how captions are displayed.
Sample caption text
Audio Description Preferences
This media player supports audio description in two ways:
alternative described version of video
text-based description, announced by screen reader
The current video has no audio description in either format.
Use the following form to set your preferences related to audio description.
Keyboard Preferences
The media player on this web page can be operated from anywhere on the page using keyboard shortcuts (see below for a list). Modifier keys (Shift, Alt, and Control) can be assigned below. NOTE: Some key combinations might conflict with keys used by your browser and/or other software applications. Try various combinations of modifier keys to find one that works for you.
Current keyboard shortcuts
Alt + Control + por spacebar = Play/Pause
Alt + Control + s = Restart
Alt + Control + r = Rewind
Alt + Control + f = Forward
Alt + Control + vor1-9 = Volume
Alt + Control + m = Mute/Unmute
Alt + Control + c = Hide captions
Escape = Close current dialog or popup menu
Transcript Preferences
The following preferences affect the interactive transcript.
Captions Preferences
The following preferences control how captions are displayed.
Sample caption text
Audio Description Preferences
This media player supports audio description in two ways:
alternative described version of video
text-based description, announced by screen reader
The current video has text-based description.
Use the following form to set your preferences related to audio description. After you save your settings, audio description can be toggled on/off using the Description button.
Keyboard Preferences
The media player on this web page can be operated from anywhere on the page using keyboard shortcuts (see below for a list). Modifier keys (Shift, Alt, and Control) can be assigned below. NOTE: Some key combinations might conflict with keys used by your browser and/or other software applications. Try various combinations of modifier keys to find one that works for you.
Current keyboard shortcuts
Alt + Control + por spacebar = Play/Pause
Alt + Control + s = Restart
Alt + Control + r = Rewind
Alt + Control + f = Forward
Alt + Control + vor1-9 = Volume
Alt + Control + m = Mute/Unmute
Alt + Control + c = Hide captions
Alt + Control + d = Turn on descriptions
Escape = Close current dialog or popup menu
Transcript Preferences
The following preferences affect the interactive transcript.