Barnes Foundation’s website is near-perfectly accessible

How accessible are Philadelphia’s websites? Websites for The Barnes Foundation, Penn Medicine and The City of Philadelphia scored high on a web accessibility test, according to Jenkintown web dev firm Context.

Read Context’s full blog post here.

When technologists talk about web accessibility, they’re referring to how easy it is for people with disabilities to use a site. Here are some examples, as described by Context head Jim Keller:

• Does the website prevent screen readers (like JAWS), used by the visually impaired, from working?
• Can the site be navigated solely with a keyboard? “Some impaired users don’t have access to a standard mouse/keyboard combination and are required to use alternative devices to browse the web,” Keller said in an email. “If the site requires mouse interaction, it may be possible to be ‘stuck’ on a given page. Luckily, this particular point has been increasingly accounted for almost by default, at least in responsive or mobile sites, because most mobile devices require the site to work with touch only.”
• Are the colors visible to colorblind people? “For colorblind users, it’s extremely important to choose colors that don’t blend together if someone can’t see a full spectrum of color,” he said. “For example, light blue text on a darker blue background might be completely invisible to some visitors.”