Web: accessibility and languages
Accessibility (a11y)
Building software that people with disabilities can use: with a keyboard, a screen reader, zoom or captions.
In the EU it is also a legal duty: the European Accessibility Act applies from June 28, 2025 to products and services such as e-commerce, banking, e-books and passenger transport, with an exemption for micro-enterprises providing services. In practice the bar is WCAG level AA. Automated checkers such as axe catch only part of the problems; the rest needs a keyboard and a screen reader.
Related terms
- WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: the W3C standard of testable accessibility criteria, at levels A, AA and AAA.
- Numeronym (a11y, i18n, k8s): A word shortened to its first letter, the number of letters in between and its last letter, like a11y for accessibility.
- Internationalization (i18n): Preparing code so it can support any language and region without changes: texts, dates, numbers, plurals and writing direction.
