In the world where everything and everyone are connected through a digital wire, digital accessibility has become an essential aspect that should be involved at all costs. This process requires all digital products—mainly websites, mobile apps, and other related digital tools— provide a fair degree of accessibility for their users.
To put it on a simple term, the main purpose of digital accessibility is to make all users feel included without any exception. That being said, people with disabilities should also have the same experience as able-bodied users when they access digital tools. This is when The A11y Project comes to the rescue as it provides digital accessibility services for everyone, including the disabled users.
Getting to Know the A11y Project
The name “A11y” is actually a numeronym—an acronym with numbers—for the word “accessibility”. The number “11” in the middle represents the eleven letters between the letter “a” and “y” that are not included to form the aforementioned word.
Behind its cleverly meaningful name, The A11y Project serves as a free online resource to increase digital accessibility for all users, including people with disabilities. It is classified as an open project which allows anyone to support, contribute, as well as use and share the available free resources.
Its Main Goals
The A11y Project is developed with the aim of optimizing web and digital accessibility for all users worldwide. While working hand in hand with web designers and developers around the globe, this project will make sure that the principles and policies of web accessibility can be easily implemented on any type of digital tool—whether it is a website or mobile app.
To achieve its main goals, The A11y Project holds on to three core principles: digestible, up-to-date, and forgiving. With those principles in mind, this project is committed to featuring digestible contents, up-to-date information, and encouraging resources for anyone needing its services.
What It Offers
In line with its ultimate goal, The A11y Project offers a number of useful resources on its highly accessible and easy-to-navigate website. The resources include:
- The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) checklist as the main reference
- Detailed information about assistive technology to increase digital accessibility
- Reliable resources for teaching web accessibility to beginner developers
- Various articles about web and digital accessibility
- Links to other related A11y resources, including books, blogs, articles, software, podcasts, and web generators
How It Can Benefit You
If you are a web master, designer, or developer working on the digital or web-related projects, you can reap many benefits from The A11y Project. This open platform provides detailed and trustworthy resources to help you make your website or other digital tools thrive with the optimal accessibility.
Even if you are a beginner in the field, The A11y Project will help you understand the basic principles of digital accessibility through its assistive technologies. You can also participate in collaborative projects with other knowledgeable web designers and developers. That way, your own project will meet the requirements of web accessibility, making it perfectly available and accessible for anyone without exception.
To sum up, The A11y Project is what you need to build a highly accessible digital tool while providing the same amount of information and service for all users.