Website Accessibility
Monday, September 1st, 2008 | Web Design, Web Development
One of the most important considerations for every web design project is the target audience. Whilst in the past a lot of people were content simply to identify the main demographic such as “male teens” or “IT professionals” and to design accordingly, with technology such as screen readers becoming readily available for those with disabilities to get online much easier these days, it is important to take them into account as well. In fact, if you don’t take the needs of disabled users into account when building a website, you might find yourself getting in trouble for discrimination.
Web accessibility is about making your websites accessible to the largest possible audience, and this includes taking into account the many different devices the website may be accessed with, and the ways in which you can allow users to customise the content. For example, even just designing your website so that it can easily scale when the user increases the font size can make it much easier to use for those with a visual impairment.
There are many organisations and agencies attempting to standardise web accessibility to make it easier for the designers and developers to integrate accessibility into their sites. This is all happening alongside the standardisation of XHTML, CSS and the other web technologies, and you may find that you only need to make a few changes to bring your sites up to scratch. One great resource for accessibility information is the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). You can find a copy of their guidelines at Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and a more specific list at Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 which sorts the guidelines according to priority. Priority 1, for example, are all those guidelines that a web designer or developer must adopt in order for their website to be considered accessible. Priority 2 includes all those guidelines that should be implemented and the final priority is for those that a designer may include.
Putting in the time and effort to make your websites more accessible should be one of your top priorities when building new sites. Not only will this broaden the websites potential audience, but it also shows that you are a considerate designer and that you care about the people who view your work.
No comments yet.