Accessibility on the net

Accessibility is often neglected on the www. Without considering this you can neglect the needs of some users, and even break the law. This article explains why accessibility is important, and what you can do to meet the accessibility guidelines set by the W3C.

Web accessibility standards are there to make the www easier to use by people with special needs. For example, someone with poor eyesight may need high contrast in order to read on-screen text.

They are not just there for dissabled people either, think of people browsing the web on PDA’s for example, they need to use websites just as easily as people on their desktops.

Also there are benefits for web developers. A nicely laid out site using web standards is more viewable to search engines, which can in turn give you a better rank in search engines.

So in general, dont ignore them!

What are the web accessibility standards?

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), set by the W3C, provides stratergies and guidelines to meet the needs of people with disabilities.

By following them you help ensure your site is viewable by the majority of users, and makes sure your site is friendly for disabled users.

It is also important to note, that if you run a site for your business, you must provide an accessible site by Law.

Levels of compliance

  • WAI-A – Site meets the priority one checklist. These are the core guidelines every site MUST meet to be friendly to people with special needs, and allow people to view the content.
  • WAI-AA – Site meets priority 1 and 2 guidelines. These guidelines SHOULD be met by developers, if not people may find viewing your content difficult.
  • WAI-AAA – Site meets priority 1,2, and 3 checkpoints. You can satisty this to make sure your site is viewable by the majority of users.

How to check your site’s compliance

You can check your compliance by going through the checkpoints manually. There are also services that can help you do this, but you may still need some manual input to make sure you correctly meet the guidelines.

A site that can help you verifiy your accessibility is Watchfire, http://webxact.watchfire.com/.

This will automatically test your site and show you what you need to do in order to make your site accessible.

Links

  1. WAI – http://www.w3.org/WAI/
  2. Watchfire – http://webxact.watchfire.com/

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