This post is quite simply a big thank you to Ashley Firth, who has written a wonderful book called Practical Web Accessibility: A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Inclusion, now in a second edition. This book has been one of the main driving forces behind our library’s progress toward compliance with impending accessibility requirements.

Firth’s book is mostly not about checklists, or verification software to run, or pinning (misplaced?) hopes on AI to solve our accessibility problems. Instead, it is about principles that can guide us to create content that is accessible at the outset. Understanding the approaches laid out in the book is an effective way to avoid painful revisions and constant self-doubt further down the road.

Nonetheless, there is material here for both accessibility enthusiasts as well as for recalcitrant box-tickers. Moreover, the book is better than any audit, because it helpfully points directly at how to build accessible sites going forward: by knowing the principles, and how to apply them.

Anyhow, if you have a web accessibility mandate of any sort, I highly recommend spending some time with this book.