Accessibility seeks to make an application usable by everyone, including people with disabilities such as visual, auditory, ambulatory, or cognitive impairment. For example, use of ALT text for graphic images on a web site can help a user with low-functioning vision.
Accessible design for the Internet is formally guided by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the Web Accessibility Initiative's Accessible Rich Internet Applications standard (WAI-ARIA). It may be required by law, notably Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (USA). Other helpful resources are found at WebAIM.org and CynthiaSays.com.
Stand-alone software is made accessible by thoughtful design and APIs such as Microsoft UI Automation for Windows.
This tag should not be used for:
- programming that requires "accessing" a process in multiple threads, a object in a class, etc.
- responsive-design, which deals with serving content to a wide range of devices. (This can be closely related at times, but is generally a separate topic.)