Penelope Rance

I love the A Book Apart books. These tiny volumes are easy to read while really getting into their subject and Accessibility for Everyone by Laura Kalbag is no exception.

This quick read really gets into why designing and building accessible websites is so important, not just for disabled users but for everyone, and how to get started.

It is not going to tell you exactly how to code your site, but Laura goes into the ins and outs of how to structure your page and why this is so important.

She goes into details about different disabilities and how our designs can help them. But she also makes the good point that while we make our designs better, maybe for a deaf person watching our video, we are also making it better for the person in an ultra-quiet shared office who wants to watch it too.

She also talks about testing with disabled users, reminding us that watching them using their own set up is better than making them use ours in a lab and just because something works for one user does not mean it will work for everyone.

And if you need to make the case for why making your product accessible is important and you need to get into the hard sell, she also covers many of the different laws that you might be breaking if you do not do this.

It also has a good list of extra resources so that once you have got a taste for accessible design and build, you can move on and learn even more.

This book would be perfect for anyone who is interested in creating accessible websites but is not sure where to start. Maybe a project manager who needs to oversee an accessibility project, a developer coming to accessibility for the first time or a designer trying to make their designs inclusive.

Basically unless you are already working on a completely accessible website or product, and I do not think many people are, you should read this book.