Web Accessibility - why it matters
What is web accessibility?
Web accessibility is about making a website accessible to all Internet users (both disabled and non-disabled), regardless of what browsing technology they're using. (http://www.webcredible.co.uk/)
What is the law?
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1994 lays out a series of laws to ensure people with disabilities are not discriminated against. Parts of the DDA law are specific to the design and implementation of websites and require certain minimum standards are met. The W3C (the Internet governing body) devised a set of web accessibility guidelines which formed the basis of measuring if a site is accessible or not.
In the past it was difficult to implement the W3C guidelines but in recent years it has become a lot more straightforward. Many content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla already have well designed templates built that are totally compliant and can easily be tweaked to meet clients needs. Developers are also greatly aided by tools such as Firebug which integrates with the FireFox browser. In fact any website developed by a professional web design company today should be fully compliant as standard without the client incurring an extra cost.
What are the Benefits?
Better ranking on search engines
There is no doubting that a standards compliant site with great content will give a site the best chance to rank highly in all the major search engines. Compliant sites don't guarantee success but they provide search engine spiders a much better view of a sites content giving it the best chance of it being fully and accurately indexed.
Better functionality across a range of browsing technologies
A fully standards compliant site ensures a website will look and function how it should across all modern browsing technology. This is becoming increasing important as a much greater number of people are accessing the web via mobile devices such as iPhone's.
Is my site accessible?
It's simple to find out if a website complies with modern web standards and meets DDA legislation by running a simple test on it. If you would like us to check your site contact us a we will be happy to run the test for you FREE of charge.
