It can be hard to know where to begin thinking about accessibility in your documentation. Below, we share four fairly straightforward ways you can being improving your knowledge base's accessibility today, as well as some additional resources if you want to dive deeper!
Thank you!
These accessibility suggestions were shared by Kenzie Woodbridge in Season 3, Episode 6 of The Not-Boring Tech Writer podcast and mentioned again by Kate Mueller in Season 3, Episode 7.
Use semantic headings
Don't just bold or make text larger to indicate a heading. For best accessibility, use the built-in header levels, like H1, H2, H3, and so on. These are called semantic headings.
Screen readers rely on proper semantic heading structure to navigate content and create an outline for users with visual impairments.
Maintain heading hierarchy
Don't skip a heading level. Article titles are set as Header 1 level; articles displayed on a topic display category landing page are set as Header 2. Set your headings to nest properly within each other to denote content hierarchy: an H3 should always come underneath an H2.
Jumping from H1 to H3 confuses assistive technologies and makes content harder to understand.
Write descriptive link text
Many of us have picked up the bad habit of setting links to things like "here" or "click here." These links aren't as useful for people using screen readers who navigate by scanning links (and also don't exactly entice people to click on them).
For example, "Learn about accessibility standards" is more helpful than "click here".
Start small
Use Customize > Default text to change the "See all..." links in your article lists to something more meaningful, like "View all new articles". Refer to Customize default text if you haven't used this feature before.
Provide meaningful alt text for images
Most images in your knowledge base convey some kind of information. Adding alternative text to informative images helps ensure that people who can't see images can still understand their content and purpose.
Ensure future use of images includes alt text
Our file description field in the Files library stores alt text to help streamline this process even further!
Additional resources
If you'd like to dig deeper into accessibility, here are some additional resources:
