Accessibility is Important for Everyone!: A geocache hosted on the geocaching.com site.

Overview

There is a strong business case for accessibility.

Source: WorldWideWeb Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative

Disclaimer: All of the caches in this series are nanos, and as such may not be easy to open for people who have issues with motor function. Unfortunately, it is simply too hard to place a cache that is both easily accessible by wheelchair and that won't get disturbed or removed by non-geocachers if it is large. Additionally, tabular data is generally not the most mobile friendly means of presentation. So, this page is not doing an ideal job of being accessible to devices that have smaller displays.

The previous three caches explored different accessibility guidelines and illustrated problems that arise when one does not follow those guidelines. This page is designed to show that making websites accessible benefits everyone, including people without disabilities. Here are features of the page that make it more accessible:

Accessibility Features of this page

• Only the header elements use a serif font. The rest of the text uses a sans-serif font, which is easier to read when you have a lot of text.
• The page makes valid and semantic use of headers so that there is a clear structure to the page.
• The page has a white background with black text, which is the most easily readable choice of colors.
• There is a "skip link" that is hidden until it gets focus. If you press the tab key, it will get focus and then you can press enter to jump to the "important" part of the page.
• Links use a color that has strong contrast with the white page background.
• All links on the page will show a border when they have focus.
• The table uses a caption so that it is clear what type of data it contains.
• The table presents truly tabular data. It is not used for purely presentation / layout purposes.
• The table makes proper use of the <th> element and its scope attribute, so that screen readers can give a clear context for the data in the table for people with visual impairments.
• The table headers use a black background with a white font, which is also easily readable.
• The page does not make use of any images and has a very small file size, which is more quickly delivered to web clients. This makes the page more accessible to people who do not have a fast internet connection and also cuts down on data use charges.

This page is admittedly, pretty plain. Perhaps you would prefer something different. Do you think that the accessibility features ruined your experience? Do you think that they enhanced your experience?

Thanks for taking the time to read through the information! I'm sure you are anxious to determine the final coordinates for the cache. So, without further ado let's get to it!

The Final Coordinates