Our New Accessible Website Brought to You by Accessible Web
Welcome to our new and accessible website! We have always valued inclusivity - the idea that we can create spaces and opportunities in which anyone can participate and thrive. As our web presence has grown, we realized the need to apply that value set to our virtual space as well. That is why we took our website back to the drawing board and are proud to relaunch a website that is accessible to all humans, no matter what their ability. To help us accomplish that, we were so happy to have found Accessible Web, a sister company of Bytes.co, both of which are based right here in Vermont, less than 15 miles from our bakery.
You may be wondering: what is web accessibility? Our developer friends at Accessible Web explain: “Making a website accessible means that everyone, including people with disabilities, can perceive, operate, understand, and interact with the Web. The web is a place where people with disabilities can travel, communicate, transact and exist, ideally free from any barriers that the physical world may present to them. Following website accessibility guidelines and best practices can ensure an equally excellent experience for all users, regardless of the tools or technologies they use or the way they interact with your content.”
What does this look like for Andy's Dandys? Well, you may or may not notice our branded colors on the website are darker than they are on our products on the shelf. That's because they must meet a minimum contrast ratio for readability. You may or may not notice that all our photos have an "alt text" attached to them. That is so that folks using screen readers can understand all the content of a page. These are just a couple small examples of the types of adjustments that make our site more accessible to people with disabilities.
The interesting thing about a lot of these tweaks and changes is they actually just make for a better web experience for everyone - updates like clearer navigation and enhanced readability are certainly welcome when we spend so much of our time looking at screens. We learned so much from our friends at Accessible Web: how to think about inclusivity in a whole new virtual way.