Michael Oxborrow

Everyone has the ability to access the internet. Many have learning difficulties and/or physical disabilities. Approximately 2% of any population is considered legally blind or visually impaired. Recent standards in web design (Web 2.0) have led to a need for an internet that can be accessed by all and exclude no-one with a disability. Many companies have come under scrutiny for not making their web presence available to all. On top of this they will have lost a huge number of visitors to their website and potentially sacrificed their business and/or sales.

There are roughly 2 million people in the UK alone who are affected by visual impairments. With many web designers concentrating on visual asthetics, the issue of web accessibilty is being overlooked. With screen reading technologies like Thunder, free to use screen reading software available at screenreader.net being employed by visually impaired users, making your site properly accessible is ever more important.

Accessibility doesn't have to be difficult to implement into your web site. You simply need to be aware of some key points and be vigilant when adding content. Below are some of the key points to consider to integrate web accessibility.

Navigation:

The use of proper tags when coding a website are imporatnt as web browsers like WebbIE, a free web browser for blind and visually-impaired people, will allow users to skip to sections of a web page by simply using keystrokes; so using correct heading tags like h1, h2 etc.. will allow just this and prevent the need to scroll through masses of irrelevant content.

In your code you will want to put your navigation towards the top of the page even if you want it displayed elewhere; this should be no problem for a coder. Also think about including a link element that will allow users to jump straight to the content.

Contrast and Fonts:

It is useful for a website to have the option to change the font size and also to display in an alternative colour scheme. Some people will have retinisis disorders which mean that reading black on white is more difficult that reading yellow on black for example. For this reason it is useful to include this functionality in your site. Go ahead and click the accessibility links on the pages of Webcredible to see this in action. Visit the British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society for more information about research into retinisis pigmentosa.

Images:

A blind user may not be able to see an image but that doesn't mean they should be excluded from knowing that it is there and what it shows. When it comes to alt tags a browser like WebbIE will simply say something like "graphic" when it encounters an image without one. Adding an "alt" attribute to an image tag allows you to add a brief description of what the image shows. This should be descriptive of the image content, for example a photo of a postman collecting mail from a postbox should say just this and not simply alt = "postbox". Instead of the browser stating the placement of a "graphic", the user will hear your description. It may seem irrelevant to you but can be very frustrating for a visually impaired user who is browsing a page with a lot of imagery.

Flash:

Flash can be inaccessible and, if prevelant on your page very distracting. Having vital information within flash or adjacent to flash can make it very difficult, so be aware of this. As with image alt tags Flash can contain alt information, although only certain players will allow this information to be displayed, so the over use of flash is something to aware of when designing a web page. You Tube makes use of a flash player that does include such information and is an example for other websites. If you have a limited range of vision, you need to know that a button exists to make the player go to full screen to aid your ability to see it. A play button, pause button and full screen button should be labeled as such. What you don't want to hear as a visually impaired person is button, button, button!

Java:

Java code can be very difficult to code for accessibility so in order to make coders aware of the problems and how to avoid them there is a good guide at Access Learning.

The future:

There are still many issues surrounding accessibilty which there are no fixes for at present, but since we know about those guidelines which can be be adhered to, we really ought to do. The following article may be useful: The future of web accessibility from Webcredible.

Donate to:

Screenreader.net CIC
The British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society (BRPS)
The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB)