Web Design & Development Services
Accessibility Audits
One of the great strengths of the internet is its ability to adapt to the medium you view it with. If your website is created properly you will be able to view it on a wide range of devices from mobile phones and PDAs to desktop PCs and internet enabled surfboards.
This flexibility also means that the internet is ideal for delivering content to people with disabilities who would otherwise miss out.
Visual Problems
The web is a visual medium so it stands to reason that people with visual impairments suffer the most when it comes to reaching your content. This group of people includes those who are colourblind, short sighted or completely blind. All have their own needs and all can be catered for by use of good design.
Colourblindness
One of the major problems that faces colourblind users is lack of contrast. A design might look very stylish with olive writing on a khaki background but it might as well be a blank screen to someone who can’t tell the difference between the colours. Catering for the colourblind is a simple matter of using the right colour combinations, something that your designer should be aware of. More than 7% of the UK population suffer from some form of this complaint.
Myopia
Some people are born with poor sight, others contract a disease or inherit a genetic condition. Most simply get older. All have the common problem of websites with tiny text that cannot be read easily. Use of resizable fonts and liquid layouts can go a long way towards catering for this group of people.
Blindness
People who are totally blind usually employ a screenreader – software which speaks the content of the screen to them. This obviously brings certain design issues to the fore. How can a screen reader translate a complex layout such as a three column header and footer design? The screenreader approach is by necessity extremely linear so it’s important that your documents are structured properly to avoid repetitition and allow extraneous content to be skipped.
Mobility Problems
It can also be difficult to use the internet if you have limited mobility. Your flyout menus may look really cool but someone with Parkinsons will quickly tire of trying to hover over the right link. Forms should also be formatted properly so that labels can be clicked on or tabbed through.
Legal Obligations
Making your site accessible is a legal requirement since the revised Disability Discrimination Act. It’s also the right thing to do for moral and economic reasons. Disabled people have as much money to spend as everyone else so why turn them away, especially when it’s so simple to have an accessible site?
The following articles cover some of the issues surrounding disabled access.
- Website owners face prosecution
- Websites ’failing’ disabled users
- UK’s top web retailers failing the disabled
- Disabled web access is ’being ignored’
- Web inaccessibility ’creates net underclass’
If you take away nothing else then consider the following quote from the last article in the list:
“There are over 10m disabled people in the UK and I believe that each one of those has a right to be able to buy a Christmas present online for a friend or loved one this year.” Simon Norris, managing director of Nomensa
Don’t Turn Customers Away
A good web designer will not have any difficulties making your website accessible. It’s the right thing to do morally, economically and legally. If you’d like us to audit your site and provide a detailed report on how it measures up to the guidelines, let us know. If it fails in some areas we can tell you how to fix the problems or we can fix them for you.