Accessibility is a very important yet often disregarded area of web design. Accessibility authorities are few and far between, one of the main being the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the W3C. The W3C works towards ensuring every person regardless of disability has equal access to information on the web.
More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web.”
Having a website that is not accessible to everyone and anyone is not only unfair but from a business point of view it means that you are excluding potential customers. This means that having an accessible website is a concern not only for a web designer it should be something every business should consider when commissioning a corporate website.
There are several different components that can alter the accessibility of a website; content, and assistive technology are the main areas which this post will touch upon, however, accessibility has many different facets and issues which will not be discussed. For further information on this subject visit the W3C website.
Content and assisted technology
The content of a website is what the users interacts with; it is,
“the information in a Web page or Web application, including:
natural information such as text, images, and sounds
code or markup that defines structure, presentation, etc.”
It is a very important factor of web accessibility, after all information should be available to everyone; but if a website does not take into consideration who will be accessing the website and the difficulties they may encounter then there will be an unequal access to the information.
There is no defined list of disabilities that would have trouble accessing the internet, however, the most generalised are: visual impairments, audio impairments and physical impairments. This is of course a very small selection of disabilities, for a more comprehensive list visit the W3C website.
Visual Impairments
Blindness, partial sight and colour blindness are all visual impairments that may impede access to a website. To access the internet users suffering from a visual impairment such as blindness may rely upon assistive technology such as a screen reader, a screen reader reads out either selected elements of what is being displayed on the monitor (helpful for users with reading or learning difficulties), or it can read out everything that is happening on the computer (used by blind and vision impaired users). The screen reader will use the alt tag of an image to describe what it is so ensure all images and graphics have accurate Alt tags; don’t go overboard with the description give a clear and concise sentence about what the image is. Although the alt tag does say what an image is, try to avoid using images and graphics instead of text. As a screen reader is reading out the text on the website it is important to ensure that sentence structure and spelling in spot on, this is basic common sense.
Users with low vision may have difficulty reading or viewing a website and may use a screen reader or alternatively a screen enhancement system to enlarge the text and images on the website. Websites that offer alternative style sheets enable users to customise the website enlarging the text and adjusting the background colour as required.
Able Magazine displayed in the large text option
Colour blindness is a lack of sensitivity to certain colours. Common forms of colour blindness include difficulty distinguishing between red and green, or between yellow and blue. Sometimes colour blindness results in the inability to perceive any colour. This can be problematic if for example text does not adequately contrast with the background, to alleviate this problem a website can offer a high contrast style sheet.
BBC's Ouch website displayed in high contrast
Hearing Difficulties
This may not be the first disability people would associate with accessibility issues; however, individuals who suffer from deafness may not be able to read written language fluently. The primary way to overcome this is to use clear and simple language, which many critics consider to be the best way to write for the web, Jakob Nielsen is one of the leading scholars on the matter.
Audio files pose an obstacle to those with hearing difficulties and will rely upon captions to access the information on the audio file. For this to be successful webmasters placing an audio file on their website must ensure that there is a full transcript of the audio file available.
Physical Difficulties
Motor disabilities, joint problems or missing limbs can affect the hands and arms, as well as other parts of the body. Specialised controllers, keyboards, pointing devices or mouth pointers are available to those with difficulty using standard input devices.
To aid those who do use a standard mouse give them the functionality to increase the font size and make onsite links big making it easier for those with precision difficulties to click the link.
In conclusion web accessibility is not only an important factor for those suffering from a disability; it is an issue that will no doubt affect most people at one point in their life. It is the responsibility of a web master to ensure that their website is accessible in as many different ways as possible; not only to ensure equal access to information but to ensure that you are getting the maximum amount of traffic to your website. For those online retailers who have not provided alternative style sheets or additional functionality for users with disabilities you are essentially turning customers away.
References
