If I am being honest, digital accessibility is not something that I often consider. That being said, our discussion this week was quite eye-opening to me, and I will now be making a better effort to create an accessible website. I found it very interesting to test the contrast of our website. I had 60+ contrast alerts, mainly from light grey text on a white background, but also from light green text on a pink background. I was hesitant to make any big changes to my website, but changing the theme ended up clearing nearly all of these contrast issues!

Something I have noticed is that on social media, closed captioning is very often an option, which is great. Something that I do notice being missed however, is the alternative text for images. Whenever I see alternative text from a brand on an Instagram post for example, I’m surprised because it’s done so rarely. I do hope that that will become more common. This is something that is very easy to do, though sometimes accessibility isn’t the top priority for brands or companies.

In my opinion, the main reason why websites are inaccessible is because it is confusing and hard to navigate. I can see older people getting overwhelmed at a confusing website setup. Ideally, websites should limit the amount of text, and include a large and clear toolbar so that users can easily navigate to the information that they need. Other than that, I feel as though websites and other digital media is (for the most part) well designed.