Semantic HTML & Web Accessibility

“You don’t know what you don’t know”

I found out about some stuff I did not know I didn’t know this week, and was pretty appalled at this gap in my basic knowledge. I started researching furiously and will share my key takeaways. (I’ll assume you have a basic understanding of HTML in general.)

#html #web-accessibility #semantic-html #web-development #css

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Semantic HTML & Web Accessibility

“You don’t know what you don’t know”

I found out about some stuff I did not know I didn’t know this week, and was pretty appalled at this gap in my basic knowledge. I started researching furiously and will share my key takeaways. (I’ll assume you have a basic understanding of HTML in general.)

#html #web-accessibility #semantic-html #web-development #css

The World Needs Web Accessibility Now More Than Ever

I attended a talk last year by Mike Gifford where he said, “the web has actually become LESS accessible since 2011.”

It’s cheap and easy for anyone to create a website these days, and hardly anyone considers accessibility. And why would you? If it’s not in your daily purview, it’s not going into your list of website requirements. Heck, most people don’t even think of the end user, Disabled or not, when creating a website. Especially not when they use a “drag and drop” style website creation platform. Nothing against those, just that those platforms often don’t have accessibility built in, and it’s very difficult to make them so, even if you had the desire.

The other aspect working against website accessibility is when you say the word, ‘accessibility’ not every even has a concept of what that means. I asked a website designer recently if he makes accessible websites, and he said, “yes…we add alt-tags to all our images.” Ummmm, OK. Great. But can a screen reader read your website?

So let’s dispel some myths and dive a bit into the world of what it means to implement web accessibility.

First off, it’s important to note that the USA actually has very clear legislation regarding accessibility. It’s called the Americans With Disabilities Act, and it includes websites. US-based companies should be aware that not having a minimally accessible business website can leave you open to a law suit and fines. I’m Canadian with a Canadian registered company, so I do not actually have to worry about getting sued for not having an accessible website, but bonus, I have one anyway! I’ll explain why it’s beneficial to have an accessible website even if you are not a US-based company.

#accessibility #web-accessibility #accessibility-design #accessibility-testing #amazon web services

Semantic HTML and Accessibility

In May 2001, an article published by Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web), James Hendler, and Ora Lassilain in Scientific America, publicized a new vision for the future of the web — The Semantic Web. An extract from the article reads:

‘The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents, roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.’

The Semantic Web was envisioned to be achieved through semantics encoded into the source of the web pages. Markups written for the design of web pages should be meaningfully constructed and structurally arranged to ensure readability by not just users of the web alone but also user agents and robots. MDN states that,

A great deal of web content can be made accessible just by making sure the correct HyperText Markup Language elements are used for the correct purpose at all times.

Knowing how to make web pages using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript isn’t enough to make great pages. A properly designed webpage should be easily accessible and usable by all facets of users. The readability and proper rendering of markups by user agents allow for easy accessibility to the contents of the web by the users (users with or without physical disabilities and slow connections). The right HTML tags should be used for the right purposes. This is known as** Semantic HTML or HTML Semantics**. S_emanticism_ facilitates an understanding of using tags rightfully and how and why tags are utilized the way they are in making pages for the web. Search engines use the clarity derived from HTML semantic tags to ensure that the right pages are delivered for the right queries.

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HTML SEMANTICS

The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the language of the web. It is fundamentally made up of tags that annotate and structure the contents of a web page. Web pages communicate not only to the user but web browsers as well through tags. As an example, a web browser knows that if a developer uses the <p> tag on a group of words, the developer wants the targeted words to be displayed as a paragraph. This simple example purely describes HTML semantics — using the right HTML tags for the right reasons and contexts. A bad annotation can be seen when a developer decides to use a <div>tag to replace the <header> tag to display content meant for the heading of a page. Such a page will be rendered correctly if properly formatted, however, a problem arises when a visually impaired user tries to access that web page using a screen reader. Screen readers utilize semantic tags from the DOM for their function. In such a case as stated above, a screen reader would not classify the contents of the <div>tag within the header context but rather as just another division of the page. A user in such a case wouldn’t know when the screen reader is reading out a header text.

Over the years, several tags with semantic connotations have been added to preexisting HTML tags to effect more meaning to webpages for better accessibility by diverse users. Prior to the introduction of some of these tags, many contents to be displayed on webpages were usually wrapped in **<div>** tags what is commonly being referred to as**_ “div soup”_.HTML 5** brought about a lot of new elements. Elements such as aside, article, nav, section, main, header, and footer specifically addressed the issue of excessive usage of **_div_**tags while adding meaning to markup. What semantic meaning do these tags offer?

• <article> — Houses independent and self-contained content.
• <aside> —Markup content aside from page contents.
• <footer> —Contains elements for the footer section of a page.
• <header> —Contains elements for the header section of a page.
• <main> —Signifies the main content of a page.
• <nav> —Holds the navigation links of the page.
• <section> — D_efines a section of a page._

An example of a div soup (left) and what the new HTML 5 tags offer

Representation of data in tabular form employs the usage of basic elements such astable, th, td, and tr. This usage is proper but incomplete. When creating tables for web pages, tags such as thead, tbody, and tfoot are equally important. More semantic meaning is added to a displayed table as the segmentation caused by using those additional tags clearly defines the header, body, and footer sections of the represented table. In essence, a web browser would know when it encounters a table head, its body, and the footer section.

So many tags in existence today have semantic meaning except a few. The div and span tags are non-semantic. Aspan tag should be used only for styling purposes and the usage of a div tag should only be as a last resort with regards to setting divisions for a webpage i.e it should be used for flow content with no additional semantics. The <b> and <i> tags were originally non-semantic, however, their importance has been redefined by the w3C documentation for HTML 5 for more semantic purposes.

#semantics #semanticweb #html #web-accessibility #html5

Semantic HTML and Accessibility

What is HTML?

For non-developers (and developers who did not know before now),

HTML is short for HyperText Markup Language which is basically a standard and globally recognized language that tells a web browser what to and how to display documents to our web pages. It does this with the use of tags and elements written like these; **<div>**,**<p>**_, _**<header>** etc. (Hopefully we are on the same page now).

Semantic HTML

Semantic is simply a meaningful HTML, a markup that conveys meaning and not just to the web browsers running our HTML codes but also convey some meaning to an extent to an average human (both developers and non-developers).

Having a semantic HTML is simply having a markup that explains or gives meaning to what it does.

According to Jennifer Kyrnin :

An important principle in web design is the idea of using HTML elements to indicate what they actually are, rather than how they may appear in the browser by default. This is known as using semantic HTML.

HTML provides a wide range of tags and elements (HTML4 and HTML5 provides a wide range of semantic HTML tags/elements). This wide range of elements to choose from sometimes make it a tough decision choosing which tag to use especially as some tags could produce similar results as some others on a web page. For example, the <**div>****, ****<section>** and <**article>**elements are just containers for other HTML elements and they display similar results on a web page but the only difference between them is in their meaning (Semantics). While you are reading this article, even if you are not a developer and surely you are not a web browser, you could still get some meaning from the words **section**and **article**as these are normal words we come across in the English language. But **<div>** on the other hand does not hold much meaning to it, the web browsers understand what it means but an average human might not and even if then do, it does not exactly attempt to describe the contents it contains. This is why the use off Semantic HTML is generally encouraged.

On the other side, the browsers can read, understand and render any HTML tag correctly even when semantic HTML is not applied. There are no functionality problems associated with not using semantic HTML _(I am yet to discover one), _but the issue of using Semantic HTML arises when we properly consider general accessibility especially in human context.

Accessibility

When we talk about accessibility in web design, the goal is usually to consider easy access for a broad range of audience.

According to FreeCodeCamp:

“Accessibility” generally means having web content and a user interface that can be understood, navigated, and interacted with by a broad audience. This includes people with visual, auditory, mobility, or cognitive disabilities.

Semantic HTML is a great way to achieve Accessibility. Hence, even people with visual impairments can have access to your web content even if they can’t read the screen properly, they do this through screen reader software_ . _These screen readers depend mostly on the HTML elements in other to help with page navigation.

So it is important that the right HTML elements/tags are used for the right contents and placed in the right place to allow easy access to a broader audience.

Why we all should care

Since HTML makes up a huge part of the World Wide Web which is where most of our interactions occur, I believe it is quite a big deal how well rendered and accessible our HTML is rendered to our audience, especially, since we cannot tell who might be viewing our web pages on the other side.

I believe every content, website or app we put out there was created with consideration of how it affects man/human and if that is true, then a deliberate selection of HTML tags/elements for our website should be considered so as to provide as wider range of audience access to our web contents.

#semantic-html #html #accessibility

Know Everything About HTML With HTML Experts

HTML stands for a hypertext markup language. For the designs to be displayed in web browser HTML is the markup language. Technologies like Cascading style sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript assist HTML. With the help of HTML websites and the web, designs are created. Html has a wide range of academic applications. HTML has a series of elements. HTML helps to display web content. Its elements tell the web how to display the contents.

The document component of HTML is known as an HTML element. HTML element helps in displaying the web pages. An HTML document is a mixture of text nodes and HTML elements.

Basics of HTML are-

The simple fundamental components oh HTML is

1. Head- the setup information for the program and web pages is carried in the head
2. Body- the actual substance that is to be shown on the web page is carried in the body
3. HTML- information starts and ends with and labels.
4. Comments- come up in between

Html versions timeline

1. HTML was created in 1990. Html is a program that is updated regularly. the timeline for the HTML versions is
2. HTML 2- November, 1995
3. HTML 3- January, 1997
4. HTML 4- December, 1997; April, 1998; December, 1999; May, 2000
5. HTML 5- October, 2014; November, 2016; December, 2017

HTML draft version timelines are

1. October 1991
2. June 1992
3. November 1992
4. June 1993
5. November 1993
6. November 1994
7. April 1995
8. January 2008
9. HTML 5-
   2011, last call
   2012 candidate recommendation
   2014 proposed recommendation and recommendation

HTML helps in creating web pages. In web pages, there are texts, pictures, colouring schemes, tables, and a variety of other things. HTML allows all these on a web page.
There are a lot of attributes in HTML. It may get difficult to memorize these attributes. HTML is a tricky concept. Sometimes it gets difficult to find a single mistake that doesn’t let the web page function properly.

Many minor things are to be kept in mind in HTML. To complete an HTML assignment, it is always advisable to seek help from online experts. These experts are well trained and acknowledged with the subject. They provide quality content within the prescribed deadline. With several positive reviews, the online expert help for HTML assignment is highly recommended.

#html assignment help #html assignment writing help #online html assignment writing help #html assignment help service online #what is html #about html