All Caps And Accessibility

You are not just shouting when you use all caps.

In order to make his main message standout visually each page on one of my client’s new insurance website has a headline in all capitals.

Headlines in all caps are not considered accessible for screen readers because screen readers may interpret all caps as acronyms, not words – and read out each letter instead of the sentence. How confusing would that be?

So I did not enter those headlines by typing all caps. Instead, to make them accessible, I used the text transform CSS style which shows them as all caps, but allows them to be read as words by screen readers.

Although most businesses are legally required to have accessible websites, accessibility isn’t something that most web designers and developers take into account. In fact 96% of home pages on the top 1 Million websites had WCAG 2 failures according to WebAims most recent accessibility evaluations.

Accessible websites provide a better experience for all users not just ones with disabilities.

How accessible is your website?