The Xbox Accessibility Guidelines are a set of best practices compiled by industry experts, gamers, and disabled people. The guidelines have been written to help developers, designers, and testers make games more accessible to people with disabilities.

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/a…

Holly Tuke uses screen readers on different devices every day. She says she consistently finds the same errors: unlabelled links and buttons, inaccessible web forms, and no heading structure. Here's her advice for developers.

business.scope.org.uk/article/messag…

Avoid using emoji as bullet points in social media posts. An emoji has a coded description that gets read by screen readers, and thus could confuse users who think that's part of the content. If you can't use standard lists, use dashes for bullet points or add line breaks.

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.

The Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT) is a free, downloadable resource for developers to identify seizure risks in their web content and software. This is especially helpful in evaluating video, animations, or flashing or rapid transitions.

trace.umd.edu/peat/

You don't necessarily need to say 'image of' in your alt text for users to know it's an image. Screen readers will announce that it's an image. But it can help readers to specify if it's a hand-drawn image, Polaroid, infographic, screenshot, chart, map, diagram, or so on.

Overlays are widgets or technologies that promise to improve a site's accessibility with third-party source code. More than 700 accessibility advocates and web developers have signed an open letter to explain the limitations and dangers of these products.

overlayfactsheet.com

When you can, avoid number-only date formats. Sighted users could be confused on whether the first number is the month or day. If you've incorrectly designated your document's language, screen reader users might hear the wrong date. Writing out the month prevents this confusion.

Animated images can blink or flash, presenting accessibility challenges. Flashing content can cause seizures, and many people are unaware they have this disorder until it strikes. To prevent triggering seizures, animated images should flash no more than three times per second.

People should be able to understand content the first time they read or hear it. No one should need a legal background or a Latin dictionary to understand a website. Users should be able to absorb content and instructions without needing to make sense of stuffy, stilted language.

People have personal preferences on what they consider acceptable length for alt text, but there's no definitive character limit or formula for how long alt text should be.

There is not one font that will be optimal for all users with dyslexia. Experts disagree on which fonts provide the best readability. But simplicity in typefaces is critical. Ideally, use fonts that are familiar or at least easily-parsed so that they quickly become familiar.

For audio-only content like podcasts, provide a transcript. For videos with audio, provide both transcripts and captions. In the transcripts and captions, include the spoken information and sounds that are important for understanding the content.

If you pair light colors (yellow text on white background) or dark colors (dark blue text on black background), users will struggle to read your content. Understanding color contrast will help you better serve all users, especially those with low vision.

webaim.org/articles/contr…

Many struggle with writing alt text for charts and other other data visualizations. Amy Cesal's 'Writing Alt Text for Data Visualization' hammers home the importance of explaining the chart type, the type of data, and the reason for the chart.

medium.com/nightingale/wr…

Fixing PDFs with accessibility issues is sometimes necessary, but this can be avoided by using a source document that supports PDF accessibility, following best practices, and then converting it correctly to a PDF. @WebAIM has a primer to help you out.

webaim.org/techniques/acr…

Many screen readers can produce a list with all the headings on a page. This allows users to browse the list and jump to a specific heading on the page. Write down that list and structure it. Does it make sense if you read it out loud?

Avoid using images of big blocks of text. Using actual text instead of images of text will help screen reader users, but also will help people with reading disabilities. Using actual text helps users who need to adjust the text's font, color, size, and alignment.

When writing hyperlink text, don't use URLs for the link text. Screen reader users will hear, 'h-t-t-p-colon-forward-slash-forward-slash…' Beyond that, using the URL for the link text makes it difficult for sighted users and for search engines to understand the link's purpose.

A lot of big breaking news stories involve visuals, such as timelines of events, photos, memes, and screen shots. All of those images need alt text. All of them. Don't leave out people who use screen readers.