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Improving The Accessibility Of Your Markdown

Another excellent Smashing Magazine article by Eric Bailey. Despite the title, there aren’t many Markdown-specific accessibility tips here, but it is packed with information and I challenge you not to learn something new from it!

• Markdown is a text to HTML conversion language, created in 2004. It has no editor and therefore no Clippy-esque experience to warn you if you’re introducing anything inaccessible.
• The main advice is to use headings to structure your content, as this is by far the most popular method assistive technology users use to navigate your page. Eric doesn’t use assistive tech, but he also navigates by headings via the headingsMap browser add-on.
• Write good alt text for your images, using the W3C alt decision tree if in doubt. And make sure you use punctuation!
• When linking to SVG images, add the “img” role to it, to prevent assistive tech from skipping it or announcing it as a group. E.g. <img src="foo.svg" role="img" alt="Sunflower" />.
• Whilst it is possible to write Markdown for opening links in new tabs ((url){:target="_blank"}), avoid it, as it can be a WCAG failure and a security risk.
• Skip links aren’t limited to the main site navigation; you can also use skip links to skip over, say, your Table of Contents, or to avoid keyboard traps.
• Beware libraries which automatically turn your headings into anchor links, as the markup is tricky to make accessible. I’ve covered this already in dai11y 23/12/2020.

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