Accessibility and Web Site Design

Accessibility and web design explained

Essentially accessibility means that a web site should be accessible to all. This includes people with disabilities as well as people using older computer systems.

Various software and hardware devices available can scan web pages and output the content in sound but only if the software can read the page. If it cant then the web site is inaccessible to a certain group of users. Apart from being discriminative it is also bad practice and technically illegal.

Web site accessibility issues are being lead by organisations like the Royal National Institute of the Blind and W3C.

Since 1999 websites have had a legal obligation to be accessible. This means, in essence, that reasonable efforts should have been made to make sure that a web site is accessible and not discrimanitve against any users.

Providing an alternative web site that contains only text is frowned upon as avoiding the issue and further marginalising a section of internet users by providing incomplete content.

At Creation Web Design we take on board all the information and standards available with regards to accessibility and test our sites using software and manual processes to make sure accessibility is maximised as much as possible in the design process.