Website accessibility is often an afterthought at the end a project when there is an accessibility audit or a user submits an issue, but what if we switched focus and started thinking about accessibility at the beginning of a project during the initial design and development stages?

In this talk I will present a quick overview of website accessibility (the what, who, and why), then review the underlying guidelines to making a site accessible, and finally present some general rules to keep in the back of your mind while designing and developing your next site. Not only will incorporating accessibility into your daily lives help people with disabilities actually be able to use your site, but it can help attract a wider audience/larger customer base, make your site rank higher with search engines, and can improve your overall user experience on both desktop and mobile devices.