For my series of blogs on accessible communication and digital accessibility, I spoke to various people who are involved in one of these topics. This time you can read what I learned from Margriet Ravensbergen, web designer at Buro RaDer.
I have known Margriet for a while through a marketing coach
Where we are both members of the academy. Since last summer, Margriet has also been the one who maintains my website thanks to our nice how to build telemarketing data contact at the academy. Margriet is a web designer and works together with her husband from their company Buro RaDer. RaDer is a contraction of their last names. They live together in France where they also rented out apartments until recently. They can do their work as web designers anywhere in the world, which made it easy to combine with renting out apartments.
Accessibility
I saw that Margriet often indicated to other members that some things on their website were not accessible. Then you sometimes saw: “Marrit can’t read it that way, for example”. It is sometimes easier to come up with a person you already know mamorona serivisy mifameno miaraka as an example. When an old schoolmate of mine needed a website earlier this year, I did not hesitate to recommend Margriet. During this project, Margriet learned even more about accessibility on websites and that is why I wanted to hear more from her about this subject.
Course
“The first time I learned more about accessibility was probably during my web design course,” says Margriet. She also learned a lot of accessibility tips from her husband when they started working together. Erwin is someone who thinks that ‘working according to the rules’ is very important. According to him, you work in such a way that another web designer can take over your work without any problems. Then you have to adhere to certain rules. That is also a form of accessibility. But he also pointed out to Margriet from the start that a website must also be accessible to the blind and partially sighted.
Pilot Radio
The website of my old schoolmate and her 1000 mobile phone numbers boyfriend is www.pilotradio.nl. While making this website, but also other websites, Margriet regularly tests whether everything works well, also with the client. At Pilot Radio they also regularly tested the accessibility. That way you immediately find out whether something works or not.
“There had to be a button to the different podcast apps that are available. The button that was automatically created by a WordPress plug-in turned out not to be accessible. I now had to find the right symbol for each separate app to create the buttons myself and first created 1 button to test whether it was accessible. When this worked, I also created the other buttons.”
Small tip
I ask everyone for a small, quick or easy tip that you can already implement to think about accessibility. Margriet gives the tip to at least fill in your alt texts for images correctly. And then also do the title of your image.
