People with disabilities can use websites and web tools when they are properly designed. However, currently many sites and tools are developed with accessibility barriers that make it difficult or impossible for some people to use them.

The absence of an alternative text is the classic example. Sites and tools with images should include equivalent alternative text in the markup/code.

If an alternative text is not provided for images, the image information is inaccessible, for example, to people who cannot see and have to use a screen reader that reads aloud the information on a page, including the alternative text for the visual image.

When an equivalent alternative text is presented, in HTML format, for example, information is available to everyone to people who are blind, as well as to people who turned off images on their mobile phone to lower bandwidth charges, people in a rural area with low bandwidth who turned off images to speed download, and others. It is also available to technologies that cannot see the image, such as search engines.

Another example of barrier is the lack of keyboard input. Some people cannot use a mouse, including many elderly users with limited fine motor control. An accessible website does not rely on the mouse; it provides all functionality via a keyboard.

Just as images are not available to people who cannot see, audio files are not available to people who cannot hear. Providing a text transcript makes the audio information accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

It is easy and relatively inexpensive for website developers to provide transcripts for podcasts and audio files. There are also transcription services that create text transcripts in HTML format. Most of the basics of accessibility are even easier and less expensive than providing transcripts. However, the proper techniques are poorly integrated into some web tools, education, and development processes.

Internet:<https://www.w3.org> (adapted).