Use plain text for text

The Challenge
Web designers often create menu elements or buttons that have a textual component in the graphic. These are still graphics, though – not text – and screen readers and screen enlargement software can't interpret them properly.

It is also far easier to edit and maintain text than graphical elements.

Solutions

  • Do not create graphic elements that look like text elements. Use real text instead.
  • To control the style of text elements, use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
  • Use a Web-based markup language (such as MathML) for mathematical equations and graphs when possible, since the language is designed in part for accessibility.