# Practical Methods for Improving Web Accessibility

DevFeed: [Practical Methods for Improving Web Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-to-make-your-colleagues-think-accessibility-32004.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://tech.finn.no2016/06/13/how-to-make-your-colleagues-think-accessibility/>)

Author: Tom Widerøe

Published: 2016-06-13T11:19:07Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Finn.no](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/finn-no.md>)

Topics: [Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/accessibility.md>), [User interface design](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ui-design.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [browsers](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/browsers.md>), [navigation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/navigation.md>)

Tags: [accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility.md>), [accessible](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessible.md>), [browsers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/browsers.md>), [keyboard](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/keyboard.md>), [mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mobile.md>), [navigation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/navigation.md>), [test](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/test.md>), [wcag](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/wcag.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how FINN.no employees encouraged colleagues to prioritize accessibility through workshops, user testing, and automatic validation. It describes practical checks including page scaling, pinch zooming on mobile phones, a straw test for limited vision, and keyboard navigation.

## Source excerpt

What to do when your colleagues don't make accessible products. When developing a website which affects the life of almost every person in Norway, accessibility should be a main priority. Norwegians who are not able to use FINN.no are unable to find a home without assistance. Accessibility considerations are too often an afterthought, and this can have profound effects. In the Spring of 2014, a small group of employees got together to find out how to make our colleagues care more about accessibility. After two years, the measures we think work best are workshops, user tests, and automatic validation. Workshops On a workshop we reveal accessibility issues and discuss how to solve them. At our workshops we demonstrate how FINN.no works for people with disabilities before we let the team members test it the same way themselves. People find this a lot more inspiring than memorising WCAG 2.0 recommendations and running automatic validations locally. How to test Scaling Pages The simplest thing to test for is page scalability, both for fonts and for the entire page. Most desktop browsers make it possible to scale both fonts and page no matter how poorly coded the pages are, but on mobile phones it's still quite common to lock page size to screen size. It must be possible to pinch zoom every page on mobile phones. The Straw Test Another simple method is to pretend that you are looking at the page through a straw. This simulates how the page will appear for partially sighted people who either have a limited field of vision or need to magnify the page to read it. This reveals relevant elements spaced too far apart in a way that will make it difficult to navigate the page. Keyboard Navigation Most pages are designed and coded with mouse click and touch screens in mind, and we easily forget about people with broken arms, motor disabilities, or other reasons for not being able to use a mouse. By navigating the page with only a keyboard, we test that focus on links and buttons a