Website Accessibility – One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Website accessibility is all about enabling website users, your customers, to access and use your online business service in a way that suits them.  It is an all-inclusive approach to website design and development and one that you cannot afford to neglect, especially in the current economic climate.

The law states that businesses must make reasonable adjustments to ensure that their website, considered a business service, is accessible to all and does not discriminate against any member of the public by being unreasonably difficult or indeed impossible to access and use. 

However, legal stuff aside, accessibility is not just about disability.  Statistically, your customers are likely to fall in to at least one of the following categories:

• Physically Disabled (Including blind, deaf and the visually impaired). There are currently up to 10 million disabled adults in the UK 
• Colour Blind. 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some form of colour blindness in the UK
• 60 Plus. More than 20% of the UK population are 60 or over
• English As A Foreign Language. There are estimated to be approximately 2.1 million foreign nationals currently working in the UK 
• Users Of Mobile Technology. Mobile internet usage has increased by 25% in UK
• Not Using Internet Explorer. 47% currently do not use Internet Explorer to browse the internet
• Low IQ. Information displayed on websites should be accessible to those with below average IQ 
• Dyslexia (including variants of). Dyslexia accounts for more than 10% of the population in the UK
• Inexperienced Internet Users. We cannot assume that all website users know how websites ‘typically’ work

There are many reasons why your website should be accessible:
Complying with the law, ensuring good website design and development standards, because it’s morally right and/or it makes great business sense.

Clearly, you’d have to be bonkers to ignore the vast potential customer base in the categories listed above.

What Are The Benefits For My Business?
The benefits of ensuring website accessibility far out way any costs involved in the redevelopment of your website.  Here are just a few benefits of having an accessible website:

• An improved business image promotes credibility and confidence, providing reassurance for your customers.
• Through standards based website design and development, search engine rankings are likely to improve, resulting in more traffic to your website and therefore, potentially more business.
• Common sense tells us that if your market is opened up to a wider audience, you are more likely to generate more business.
• Through good design and development and the separation of content and presentation, websites are more efficient and economical to manage and administer.
• Compliance = No legal worries
• Accessibility goes hand in hand with good website usability which is beneficial for all website users and can result in up to 100% increase in online business

Convinced?  10 Things You Can Do Today
This is obviously, just an overview of website accessibility and is by no means meant to provide you with the information needed to assess your website accessibility comprehensively however, to obtain a quick snapshot of your website; here are 10 things you can do today:

• Can you resize your text?  If your website doesn’t allow the user to change the text size, this is a sure sign that your website is currently not accessible to all.
• Can your users change the way in which your website is viewed, for example colour contrast?  It is important that users can choose various colour combinations of text and background colour such as a softer background or high-contrast combinations.
• When you roll over your website images, do you see a descriptive name for the image?  If you answer no, you will need to add “alt” tags to your images.
• When you roll over decorative images or images used as bullet points, do you see a descriptive name for the image?  If you answer yes, you should think about the relevance of this.  There is some debate as to whether ‘alt’ tags should be included on decorative images, spacers or bullet points.  To be WAI WACG compliant (The World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) it is stated that all images must have ‘alt’ tags including decorative images and images used as bullet points etc however, it is recognised and we would agree, that for screen-reader technology, this is not necessarily the best approach and the ‘alt’ tags should be left blank as there is no meaning to convey.  To add an image description in this instance may cause confusion or disorientation.
• Does your website have a sitemap?  If not, you should provide one.  This not only helps human users that can’t find what they want on your website, but also helps search engines to index your website properly and therefore, potentially improve your search engine ranking.
• Do you provide easy-to-access information about how to use your website?  If you do include accessibility tools on your website, tell your users how to use them.  Provide help with regards to using forms or tools on your website.
• Do you use “click here”, “next” or “more” in links on your website?  If so, think about providing a more meaningful phrase in the text of the link.  Not only will this improve your users understanding of the link but you will also gain ‘brownie points’ for your search engine ranking if you link this in with your keywords on that particular website page.
• Is your website designed with the content and presentation separate? If you don’t use stylesheets for the ‘design’ of your website it is possible that some assistive and mobile technologies won’t be able to comfortably access and use your website.
• Check your website from a mobile device or a different browser.  You may be surprised to see the results.
• Contact a website developer today and ask for a free basic accessibility review.

Take time to understand your users and how they use your website.  Don’t assume they are all the same.

As technology and the way we use the internet changes, accessibility should be regularly reviewed and should be considered an ongoing process.  This doesn’t have to be a burden carried out in-house and can be outsourced very easily without interruption to your online business services.

Sheila Dale, Design4Usability
www.Design4Usability.co.uk
Contact us for a ‘Free Basic Accessibility Review’
November 2008

References:
Equality and Human Rights Commission, The Age of Difference, November 2007
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, Colour Vision Defects, July 2007
National Statistics, Population > Ageing > More pensioners than under- 16’s for first time ever, August 2008
Statistics Commission, Foreign Workers in the UK, December 2007
Nielsen Online, Mobile Internet Growth 8x Greater than PC Based Internet Growth, November 2008
W3Schools monthly statistics and trends, October 2008
British Dyslexia Association, Pennington B F (1991) Diagnosing Learning Disorders, New York; Guilford
Useit.com, Jakob Nielsen