Accessible Web Design

Can you see the wood for the trees?

A person visiting your website who has impaired vision could be using screen reader software and may only be able to see a forest of code without being able to read it.

That means they can't access the information on your website so they can't access your products or services either.

Apart from causing them great frustration you may be losing their business if you do nothing about it.

Accessible web design is about making your website accessible to everyone who visits it regardless of any disabilities they may have.

In other words - the ability by all types of people to access information and services on the Internet in a manner that suits their specific needs without encountering unnecessary difficulties and obstacles.

Here are 3 Groups of people with disabilities and examples of how their access to the web might be affected.

Visually Impaired People

• May not be able to read website text or view graphics properly if at all.
• May be colour blind and unable to distinguish between low contrast text and background colours.
• May require the facility to access text by using a braille reader.
• Will be unable to use a mouse properly - if at all - unless distinguishing sounds are enabled at various mouseover points.
• May require the use of voice recognition software.

People With Physical Disabilities

• May not be able to use a mouse or keyboard properly - if at all.
• May require to use special pointing devices.
• May also require the use of voice recognition software.

People With Hearing and / or Speech Difficulties

• May not be able to hear sounds / music on websites properly - if at all.
• May not be able to use voice recognition software.

Why Should You Make Your Website Accessible?

Apart from the obvious ethical arguments here are two good reasons:

1) Legislation.

In the UK and other countries there is existing legislation that places a legal responsibility on businesses to make products and services accessible to disabled people.

Many services are moving to on-line provision and this will increase as time goes by so it is obvious that essential services must remain available to all.

2) It makes good business sense.

If you exclude people from accessing your website you are potentially turning away customers.

How Do You Make a Website Accessible?

How that is achieved is open to speculation.

It may be dependent upon what legislation applies to your business which may vary with geographical location. We are concerned here only with the requirements for UK businesses.

At this time the onus appears to lie with the website owner to make it accessible.

How accessible and to what tools or software is where the speculation can begin.

It could be argued that any website is accessible to anyone, if the tools or software they are using are compatible with the website. Especially since most existing websites will have been made using standard, commercially available, Industry Standard software. However that is not the case and legislation is aimed at making websites more compatible with current assistive technology. A common set of web standard applicable to content developers and software developers should help solve this problem.

W3C is the body acknowledged as being responsible for developing Web Standards.

They have set 3 levels of accessibility:

Single-A level - A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.

At this point in time the vast majority of existing websites do not even satisfy this level of accessibility and to do so are likely to require substantial rebuilding.

It is however relatively simple to make new websites compliant with this level but if you use any proprietary website development software compliance will not be automatic. Manual checking and amendments will be required.

Double-A level - A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.

Achieving this level of accessibility is more time consuming and will require compromise in the way tables are used for layout. Tables are currently the best and simplest method of designing a website to achieve good layout and Search Engine rankings.

Triple-A level - A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.

Achieving this level of accessibility means tables for data purposes but not layout purposes and instead using CSS (cascading style sheets) to control layouts. This is much more time consuming in comparison to building a website using tables for layout and is likely to be outside the scope of expertise of anyone except professional web designers.

Many of those who are keen on full CSS design quote advantages such as faster loading and better Search Engine ranking. In comparison to frames websites that may be true but in comparison to properly built Tables websites it is not. They may also say that sites are easier to maintain so the additional cost of making sites is recovered in the long term. This is debatable - a small business may only need to update their website very occasionally so they may not recover the cost. A properly built tables website is very easy to maintain.

Alternative - The alternative (although W3C say it should be the last alternative) is to produce a text only website for use with screen readers, etc.

Simple economics and practicalities however may dictate that for many businesses with existing websites this is a good solution and it most certainly opens up possible benefits with regard to Search Engine rankings.

What Levels of Accessibility Do You Advise?

That is for the individual website owner to decide.

All new business sites that we now build will comply with Single A Level as standard. We will build to higher levels or provide alternative text only sites, in accordance with the clients instructions.  Click here to go to our enquiries page.

Qualifications

The owner of this site has successfully completed the International Webmasters Association course in Accessible Web Design. Click here for certificate.