The lowdown on web accessibility Ollie Ansell

What is Web Accessibility?

Web accessibility is designed to open up the World Wide Web to a larger variety of Internet users by offering people with disabilities and users with restricted browser access to information quickly and more efficiently on a wide range of devices.

Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. It is essential that your website be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people. These people potentially have a lot to offer and with the help of an accessible website can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web and your company.

What guidelines are followed for web accessibility?

The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international body that sets the standards used on the internet. Through its Web Accessibility Initiative it has produced a set of guidelines aimed at making websites as accessible as is practically possible.

There are basically three levels of accessibility (Priorities 1, 2 and 3). Priority 1 checks must be attained - this really is the most fundamental level of accessibility. Without it one or more groups of people will find it impossible to access the information on your website. If you can pass Priority 2 and 3 checkpoints you will have removed 'significant barriers to accessible web documents' further detailed information on Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines can be found at www.w3.org.

Is your current website accessible?

Disabled users and people with restricted web access should be given the opportunity to complete common tasks on your website with ease. Your website should allow easy navigation of content even when certain browser features are unavailable. Review the list below to see if your website conforms to basic web standards.

• Turn off images, and check whether appropriate alternative text for the images is available.
• Turn off the sound, and check whether audio content is still available through text equivalents.
• Use browser controls to vary font-size: verify that the font size changes on the screen accordingly; and that the page is still usable at larger font sizes.
• Test with different screen resolution, and/or by resizing the application window to less than maximum, to verify that horizontal scrolling is not required (caution: test with different browsers, or examine code for absolute sizing, to ensure that it is a content problem not a browser problem).
• Change the display colour to gray scale (or print out page in gray scale or black and white) and observe whether the colour contrast is adequate.
• Without using the mouse, use the keyboard to navigate through the links and form controls on a page (for example, using the "Tab" key), making sure that you can access all links and form controls, and that the links clearly indicate what they lead to.

This is just a preliminary review to quickly identify some accessibility problems it does not cover every accessibility issue and will not catch all of the problems on a site.

Reasons for making your site more accessible:

• Improve your reputation/image and customer satisfaction
• Increase your number of first time and returning visitors
• A more usable website for your visitors
• Your site will still work with images turned off
• A more flexible website for people with older equipment
• Information will be quicker and easier to locate/download

Making your site accessible

Making your Web site accessible can be simple or complex, depending on many factors such as the type of content, the size and complexity of the site, and the development tools used.

Many accessibility features are easily implemented if they are planned from the beginning of website development or redesign. Fixing inaccessible websites can require significant effort, especially sites that were not originally "coded" properly with standard XHTML markup, and sites with certain types of content such as multimedia.

Can you afford to miss out on a new market?

Accessible content attracts a wider range of users. Users with disabilities, including older people with changing abilities due to aging are surfing the Internet every day, and even more millions are using poor browser equipment, or working under difficult user environments. Many websites lack features such as resizable fonts, images with proper text descriptions, and easy navigation, and many people will not be able to view your information if the content you provide is not fully accessible.

The older generation is becoming the fastest growing population surfing the World Wide Web, without an accessible website you could be turning away potential customers as well as violating their human rights.

What can Jones and Palmer offer you?

We  have years of experience producing accessible content managed websites of the highest standard, our sites are flexible and meet different user needs, preferences, and situations without compromise to the final product.

Our websites are constructed using the latest technologies, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language). These improve the quality and flexibility of your web site and increases the readability for many different applications and platforms. It also greatly reduces your web site development costs and enhances backward and future compatibility.

We can also provide accessible websites that ensure what you have to say is more easily seen by a wider audience of people, opening up new markets and helping to improve your corporate social responsibility by developing a positive image and enhancing the way your company is perceived.

This article was written by Ollie Ansell (Website Developer). We welcome your feedback and thoughts and would love to hear any questions you have.

Jones and Palmer is focused on the development and delivery of corporate and investor communication media.

Established in 1906, Jones and Palmer has, for the last 40 years, printed annual report and accounts for public listed companies and currently has over 150 plc clients. We are the UK’s largest on-site manufacturer of investor websites and printed annual reports.