What is this ‘accessibility’?

Aside from becoming a buzzword that designers love to throw around (“I’m a standards-aware, accessible web designer… therefore am superior to you.”), accessibility is about ensuring your site can be accessed and used well by all types of web users, including disabled or somehow impaired users.

This may not seem like a big deal to all the comfortable ‘typical’ web users reading this article right now. But you can be assured that a hefty portion of surfers on the net may be blind or visually impaired, motor impaired, paralysed or perhaps just using a particular web browser or operating system that doesn’t render websites like you would expect, or wish.

In fact, the net is the alternative that a lot of disabled users would rather turn to then trawling out to the shops to spend money, or to the library to learn. If you were in a wheelchair, would you prefer to make the arduous trip into town or roll over to your computer with a mug of coffee and The Beautiful South playing in your warm, cosy home?

So, don’t lock these users out!

Persuading the client

The client shouldn’t require persuading. Let me stress that. Building accessible websites shouldn’t be an extra cost or an additional feature. In fact, it would be nice if this article didn’t even exist, as if accessibility and standards-based web design was just as it should be, and didn’t require attention. Unfortunately this is not the case. I have friends learning web design in University and college now who have no idea what an ‘alt‘ tag is, have never heard of ‘accesskeys‘ and some (lord help them) don’t even realise there are more browsers than IE6!

However, understanding web standards and accessibilty isn’t something you should really brag about. It doesn’t necessarily make you a better ‘designer’, it just means that you’re going about building websites the right way.

I often feature links at the bottom of my sites to the w3c xhtml and css validators, so people would know that my sites use valid code. But why brag? It should be expected.

Explaining the acronyms

W3C: World Wide Web Consortium. www.w3.org.

The W3C is an international consortium founded by Tim Berners-Lee (the guy who is labeled as inventing the World Wide Web, there’s some serious gravitas behind that title!) and others. The consortium consists of member organisations, full-time staff and general webheads who work together to develop the net, raise understanding of the correct ways to build sites, create new technologies and work with all kinds of companies and people to help make the web a better place.

WAI: Web Accessibility Initiative. www.w3.org/WAI/.

In their own words, “the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) works with organizations around the world to develop strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.” The WAI offers 3 levels of access. The relatively easily achieved Priority 1 through to the the master level at Priority 3. The reason that there are 3 levels is because it is understood that you can’t just expect everyone to become accessibility gurus overnight. Like transitional DOCTYPES, this allows continuous development and an evolving understanding of web standards and accessibility.

Section 508. www.section508.gov.

Section 508 is one of the few legal acts concerned with user experience and disability discrimination on the net. Becoming law in 2001, it dictates how sites should cater for various disabled users. Although it only applies to federal agencies and government sponsored activities, 508 sets a precedence that should be acknowledged by all designers.

Also check out:

• The Guild of Accessible Web Designers
• The Web Standards Project
• A List Apart

Ignore the stigma

So far, accessibility sounds as if it’s for the best. But, even after all these years of constantly pushing towards a better understanding and acceptance of standards and accessibility, some people either refuse to accept it or believe it will hinder them as designers. FALSE. I’m not trying to sell it, and I don’t worship it – I just want to rule out any possible negative implications:

• Building accessible websites doesn’t, and shouldn’t, cost any more.
• Building accessible websites hardly takes much longer, and if done properly will probably save time in the future.
• You don’t have to build multiple versions of your site (unless you’re going for a Flash and a HTML version). Your sites should be perfectly adaptable to different types of browsers, screen resolutions and tailored to different users in one fell swoop.
• Building accessible sites does not restrict you as a designer. Your sites can be as fancy as you want with imagery, typography, scripts, animation, hybrid layouts etc and still be accessible.
• Accessibility is not just catered to disabled people. It affects all users. It considers people with slightly poor vision or motor skills, people using mobile web browsers, screen readers, text-only browsers, search-engine robots, people who are temporarily disabled and the list goes on. Do you realise what a massive portion of the web-browsing population this covers?

So what are the real benefits?

I’m sure many reading this have just been scanning and may have missed a few bits, plus there’s still plenty I’ve not mentioned. But a blog article can only get so long. So, the benefits of building accessible websites?

• Increase market share and audience reach. By not locking out a large portion of users, you are of course opening the door for them.
• Increase search engine listings and discovery. That’s right: ACCESSIBILITY CONTRIBUTES TOWARDS SEO! Seriously, a lot of the techniques employed while building accessible sites really do aid SEO. Cleaner code is easier to parse. Alternative text helps to describe your site and provides additional content. Captions, table summaries, text descriptions, anchor titles and meta-data all provide additional descriptive data bout your site.
• Improve efficiency by reducing maintenance and sometimes bandwidth.
• Demonstrate social responsibility.
• Reduce the risk of any legal implications.

Still not convinced? I’ve hardly exhausted the subject but I don’t wish to bore you further. For more information you can visit the links mentioned above.

That’s all neat, but how do I go about it?

Of course there’s quite a lot of ground to cover on the subject of ‘how-to’. So I’ll be covering this in part 2.

If you wish to discuss the points raised above, think I’ve missed anything (surely I have) or disagree – let the people know in the comments section.

Move on to part 2 – Accessible web design – The how.