Posted by Alexander Halser in Technical Writing, Training on September 30, 2024
Accessibility has been a hot topic for quite a while, but now it’s getting serious. From July 2025 it’s going to be a legal requirement for all new products in the EU, and this also applies to websites and documentation. So how are we going to make HTML accessible?
As of July 2025, all new products in the EU must conform to the European Accessibility Act (EAA), and this includes websites, HTML documentation as well as hardware and software. Web designers and documentation authors are going to have to comply in time if they want to avoid some potentially eye-watering penalties.
Documentation in PDF and some other local file formats can be handled accessibly with updated software, but when it comes to HTML, authors are pretty much on their own. This article explains the basics of making HTML accessible and compliant.
Please note: This article is about accessible HTML in general. When you create Webhelp/HTML5 with Help+Manual, our tool already outputs the required accessibility tags and attributes for you. Look for updates tagged “ARIA” on this blog, to learn more about accessibility in Help+Manual. This article, however, is still useful for Help+Manual users who want to update customized Webhelp skins to make them accessible.