This book aims to help web designers and developers come to grips with building exciting, accessible, and usable web sites/applications with HTML5. The book looks at using HTML5 to serve the needs of the widest possible audience, including people with disabilities using assistive technology (AT) and older people. It aims to be a useful go-to guide by giving you practical advice. The book explores the new semantics of HTML5 and how to combine them with authoring practices you may know from using earlier versions of HTML. It also aims to demonstrate how HTML5 content is currently supported (or not) by assistive technologies such as screen readers, and what this practically means for you as you endeavor to make your HTML5 projects accessible.

The HTML5 specification is huge, with new APIs and patterns that can be difficult to understand from an accessibility perspective. Accessibility itself can also seem complex and nuanced, in particular if you have no experience dealing with the needs of people with disabilities. This book aims to hold your hand through the process of gaining an understanding of the needs of people with disabilities, as well as the new specification.

Accessibility isn’t a mysterious or esoteric subject, but it is nuanced. And HTML5 is a gamechanger. Ultimately, creating accessible content is really a quality design issue. (Good design enables; bad design disables.) And getting design right is often a matter of choosing the correct approach. This book hopes to be your companion in understanding both, HTML5 and good accessibility design.