Accessibility

While visitors are interacting with your website by new methods such as touch, tap, and swipe, other visitors are using assistive technologies. Screen reading software is used by the visually-impaired to access your content. Mobility-challenged visitors may be navigating your website using only a keyboard.

Accessible web content is not only the right thing to do—it’s the law. Section 508 is US law and WCAG 2.0 A/AA are international guidelines that are considered best practices for accessible technology.

Responsive Framework is fully compliant with both Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 A/AA.

But site administrators, editors, designers, and content providers must be diligent in maintaining accessible content and making sure new content you publish remains accessible. Learn more about keeping your content accessible to everyone.

Publishing accessible content also has silver linings:

• Using semantic HTML markup will make your content more discoverable by search engines.
• Using a distraction-free design will benefit visitors with learning disabilities.
• Accessible content is more standards compliant, making it more likely to be compatible with the connected devices of the future.

And accessible content does not only benefit those who have physical disabilities; for instance, video captioning is used widely by students where English is a second language.

Responsive Framework uses semantic markup out of the box. The preset color palettes provide good contrast. The design is navigable for keyboard-only users. And the use of HTML 5 tags like article, header, footer, and aside will be embraced by visitors using assistive technologies.