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Software Engineering vocabulary · Web, Mobile and Interface Development

Accessibility

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/əkˌsesəˈbɪləti/nounCore term

In software engineering, accessibility means: The practice of making websites usable by everyone, including people who are blind or deaf, have limited movement or use assistive technology.

In Turkish: erişilebilirlik

How it is used

Often written a11y (a, eleven letters, y). Teams run accessibility audits and test against WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. In many countries, accessibility is also a legal requirement for some websites.

Example sentences

  1. We ran an accessibility audit and found forty issues on the checkout page.

  2. Good accessibility also helps users on slow phones or in bright sunlight.

Common collocations

  • accessibility audit
  • web accessibility
  • improve accessibility
  • accessibility issues
  • WCAG compliance
  • alt textA short written description of an image, added with the alt attribute, that screen readers read aloud and browsers show if the image fails to load.
  • ARIAAccessible Rich Internet Applications: a set of HTML attributes, such as role and aria-label, that give assistive technology extra information about elements.
  • contrast ratioA number that compares the brightness of text with the brightness of its background; high ratios such as 7:1 are easier to read than low ones such as 2:1.
  • keyboard navigationUsing a site with the keyboard only, moving between links, buttons and fields with Tab and activating them with Enter or Space.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Web, Mobile and Interface Development

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