Understanding my privilege.

Whilst I'm currently in the process of reading the book Accessibility for Everyone by Laura Kalbag. I have noticed that my knowledge of accessibility is near zero.

My own experience with accessibility features amounts to using mouse and keyboard in combination with TAB for quickly accessing links on a page, so reading this book has certainly given me new perspective on how users navigate their way across the internet.

Looking back the years.

During my years as web developer I've installed countless plugins to test for accessibility, visual impairments, valid structure and most anything else that can be tested using bots - as long as my pages got green I thought I was golden.

I was wrong.

Thinking back on when I first learned about accessibility and WCAG I must admit I was to immature in my understanding off standards and guidelines that I only ever skimmed through it thinking I understood them.

What I had learned throughout the years on blog posts and forums about HTML structure has been wrong. Most of what I've read focuses on SEO - that has been a hot-topic for years. I cannot remember when or where I learned this tricks, or if I simply misunderstood what I read, but for years I have been using alt text on images to add keywords for better search.

<img src="example.com/image.png" alt="example, search, keywords" />

Not using it for it's intended purpose which is to describe what is on the image in the event the image cannot be loaded.

the value of the alt attribute provides equivalent content for those who cannot process images or who have image loading disabled

Quote taken from a snippet of the img element section of HTML Living Standard.

Doing better.

Going forward in my career I plan to-do better, to learn more, to be more understanding, and to above all else widen my understanding that the way I navigate the web isn't the end all be all, I still have a lot more learn about accessibility and how to implement a better standard in my work.

So to end off this jumbled post of scattered thoughts I ask you - yes you, you who is more knowledgeable then me.

Where do I go now? What should I read or listen to too further my knowledge?