Accessibility: Is your web site open to all?

Accessibility Is your web site open to all?

There are tens of billions of web pages online and they all have one thing in common… text mark-up language hyper

And there’s one important group of users for whom text is all that matters… search engines

like to see you naked search engines and that means no socks either

Web standards… A user centred approach

Text should be independent of its presentation

It’s inherently more adaptable to other devices (eg: mobiles) and more malleable to the specific needs of particular users

It’s also easier to redesign: just change the stylesheet

Your site should not be reliant upon JavaScript

Around 1 in 20 people turn JavaScript off

Your site will work on all modern web browsers

(Internet Explorer dominates but 1 in 10 users don’t use it)

Web standards are the future of the semantic web

The process of making content more meaningful to both people and machines

Web standards are… Consistent with good accessibility

Search engines can properly evaluate your content

And may attribute more value to it than they would otherwise

Your web site will be DDA compliant

A legal obligation but particularly important if you have public sector customers/clients

Your pages will be leaner and load quicker

If your site has really high volumes of users, this can lower your hosting costs

Your site can be delivered to mobiles more easily

Some resources for your designer If they’re any good, this will be old news to them! This page is 4 years old, but still a great primer on the issues… www.hotdesign.com/seybold Web forms pose particular difficulties for users with disability if done badly. This site explains how to do them well… www.websemantics.co.uk/ tutorials/accessible_forms

This presentation available at www.slideshare.net/tag/impact-071031