Web Accessibility

Web Accessibility refers to the idea that a website can be designed such that it will be accessible to disabled readers. This audience includes people with limited vision as well as users who do not have access to a mouse, epileptic users, deaf users, and web users whose first language is not English. Web Accessibility also deals with the great number of peopple accessing the internet from handheld devices (PDAs and cell phones), WebTV, old computers, or slow connections. Trenton Moss from A List Apart writes more about this in his article, What is Web Accessibility?

There are many things you can do to make your website accessible, including: minimize the use of images, provide alternative text, use readable and resizable fonts and layout, organize content in a logical way, and provide a print stylesheet. Some sites even have an option to change the layout of the site to make it more readalbe for certain users. The Disability Rights Commision has an almost exhaustive version of this feature on their website while the English in Chester website makes use of a subtler "switch to high contrast" button at the top of the page. (If you look at the page source, you will also notice that the site makes use of access keys and "skip to content" is the first link in in the site's html.)

If Web Accessibility interests you, look at Joe Clark's extensively-researched and well-written online book, Building Accessible Websites. You may also be interested in this shorter and well-illustrated article, Creating Accessible CSS by WebAIM, a non-profit within the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University. You can also test a site for "quality, accessibility, and privacy issues" with WebXACT, a free online service.

Even if you do not plan on making your site completely accessible, it will probably interest you to know that many of the techniques that make a website more accessible to a disabled person or someone using a PDA to access your website also make your site more accessible to search engines! This means that an accessible site has an advantage when it comes to attracting traffic from web-surfers. For more information, look at Andy Hagans's Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization from A List Apart.

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