Content checks for web accessibility

This page gives an overview of practical approaches and best practices to keep your content readable for as many users as possible.

Reading level

People don’t read on the internet. They scan a page for keywords and only start reading when they find what they are looking for. That’s why it’s important to make the text scannable and easy to read.

Documentation about readability

Headings

Headings are the framework of your content. A good heading structure reflects the content on your page, like the index of a book:

  • One H1 per page, describing what the page is about
  • Use the other headings meaningfully by their level and not by their font size
  • A good heading describes in short the content that follows
  • Do not skip a heading level

Documentation about heading structure:

  • Use meaningful link text that describes the content being linked to
  • Avoid “click here”, “read more”, ”download”, ”continue reading” as link text. It’s meaningless and people have to read around the link to see what’s it about
  • If you use an image as link, use the alternative text as link text

Documentation about link texts:

Video and audio

  • Make sure video has closed captions
  • Make sure audio has transcriptions
  • Don’t autoplay video and audio

Alternative text for images

Always give images proper alternative text using the W3C alt decision tree.

Documentation about alternative text for images: