Website Accessibility Report 10
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Guideline 9. Design for device-independence.
It is possible that people using your web site will not use a mouse, a keyboard, or other such device that we are all used to. Thus, your site needs to be designed with these people in mind. Some people will use only the keyboard, some might control what goes on with their voice, and some simply have a screen reader tell them what is on the screen. If there is a part on your web site that can only be accessed via a mouse, these users will not be able to use that control. Image maps and elements need to be able to be accessed by different types of input. Logical event handlers are better than device-dependent event handlers. Tab order needs to be established and make sense, and keyboard shortcuts are a nice thing to include with important links.
Client-side image maps are more accessible to users than are server-side image maps; therefore use client-side whenever possible. If a web site is accessible to keyboard input, it is usually well designed and accessible by most other types of input, but be sure that all elements can be accessed by different inputs. Redundant input methods can help to ensure that content is accessible to all who would like to use it. onfocus and onselect are helpful instead of using onclick so that different users can use the controls. A logical tabindex should be established that will help users with keyboards tab through the links in an order that makes sense. Form controls, important links, and other parts of your website can use the accesskey attribute that allows a keyboard shortcut to be applied; this makes it so users can easily go to important links by the click of a button.