Companies are reluctant to make their websites accessible for a number of reason, possibly because they feel that it would too expensive or because they feel that in order to make there site accessible it will need to become dull. There are many such myths that prevent many companies from making their websites accessible to blind and visually impaired user. Many companies are unaware of the benefits that they can gain from making there website accessible to blind and visually impaired users. This page highlights some of the benefits and myths that exist.
There are many benefits that a company can gain from making there website accessible, these are discussed below.
An accessible website separates the content and presentation. A web page has a HTML document that contains the words and images for that page. The HTML document can call a CSS document that includes the presentation information this CSS document is shared by all the pages on the website. To adjust the layout of your website, you only have to make changes in the CSS file, this saves time and money.
If a web developer takes the time and effort to make there website accessible then they are also making it accessible to new technologies such as PDA’s, because accessible websites often display perfectly on PDA’s. The users who use PDA’s are often very weathly individuals, so catering for this customer base could prove very lucarative particularly for E-Commerce sites.
Making a website more accessible to blind and visually impaired users also makes it more accessible to search engines. Search engines cannot understand images, JavaScript, Flash, audio and video content. By providing alternative content to each of these, search engines will have a better understanding of the purpose of a website. The more understanding a search engine has of a site the higher it should place it in the search engine rankings as accessible web sites are also easier for the search enginie to index.
Many countries around the world have discrimination laws that require both public sector and private sector organisations to provide accessible websites, not only blind and visually impaired users but people with various disabilities. The legal and standards page contains more information about the legislation that is in place in some countries.
If a web developer develops there website against the WCAG 1.0 standard then this will help protect them from legal proceedings, should a user feel that part of the website is inaccessible. By developing the site against the WCAG 1.0 standard a web developer is showing some commitment to Web Accessibility, even if they are unable to make all of the pages of a website accessible. This is something that would be taken into account in a court of law.
Just 17% of web users are connected to the Internet via broadband. So it is vital that a website can download quickly for all users. The alternative content provided on accessible websites allows them to download quickly. This is very useful for users using 56k modems or some sort of moblie technology such as WAP phones.
Usability and accessibility are very closely related, accessibility applies only to users with disabilities while usability applies to all users. If a website is made accessible to blind and visually impaired users, then it should also improve the usability of the website for all users. For example some users who have slow Internet connection choose to turn off image loading to increase the download speed of a page. If all of the images on a page have alt text then none of the content is lost. Similarly not everyone has the latest Flash program or JavaScript support.
An accessible website must have alternatives for this type of content as it is not well supported by screen readers. However if a user does not have a Flash or JavaScript program installed then the alternative content can proove very useful as an equivilant alternative for users that do not have Flash and JavaScript. Things such as clear and accurate heading as well as simple and concise language can also help other groups of uses such as those who do not have English as there first language.
Making a website accessible can lead to good publicity for a company as well as rasie awareness of Web Accessibility issues. For example Tesco have recived a lot of praise for making there website accessible to people with various disabilities. Meanwhile there competitors have received a lot of critism because there websites are either in accessible or not as accessible as the Tesco website.
Accessible websites also often display perfectly on the latest web technology such as WEBTV, WAP mobile phones and PDA’s. So it can often prove very profitable if a company is willing to take some time and effort to make there website accessible.
Maintaining a website can often be very expensive for a web developer, however an accessible website can often reduce the amount of site maintainence required. For example many accessible websites use Cascading Style Sheets to control the presentation and layout of a page. Cascading Style Sheets reduce site maintainence because one simple change to a style sheet can mean that the change is reflected on all of the pages that use that particular stylesheets (this is assuming that the web developer has used external style sheets).
Making a website accessible for all disabilities not just blind and visually impaired users can open up a whole new market for a company. There are many millions of people around the world who have a disability, they also have a large amount of spending power.
The RNIB estimates that there are 2 million people in the UK who are blind or visually impaired, that’s 4% of the population. However there are 8.6 million who have a disability, that’s 14% of the population. The Disability Rights Commission estimates that disabled people in the United Kingdom have a spending power of £40 billion.
Looking from a worldwide prospective, In America it is estimated that 8% of the population have a disability that effects there ability to access the Internet. Meanwhile in Europe the UN estimates that there are 37 million people who have a disability, of those 37 million people it is estimated that 11% have a disability which effects there ability to access the Internet, this is expected to rise to 18% by 2020. The spending power of American and European people with a disability combined is estimated at $175 billion. Overall it is estimated that there are 54 million people worldwide who have a disability.
An accessible website can also benefit the elderly. The population around the world in now aging, an accessible website can open up this sector of the market to a company. The UK government estimates that there are 12 million people in the UK aged 60 over, that 21% of the population. As stated above accessible websites often display perfectly on the latest web technologies, so this is another new market that an accessible website could open up for a company.
There are many myths surrounding Web Accessibility, these are discussed below.
As stated above 8.6 million people in the UK who have some form of disability. 2 million of these having some sort of sight problem. The majority of these are able to use the web blind and visually impaired users use a wide range of assistive technology to access the web including screen readers, Braille displays, talking browsers and screen magnifiers. The assistive technology section contain more information about the assistive technology that blind and partially sighted users use to access the Internet.
Blindness or low vision are only two forms of disability affecting people who use a website. Accessible pages improve the usability of a website for everyone, not just those with disabilities. For example accessible websites often display perfectly on the latest web technology such as WAP mobile phones and PDA’s. They also assist users who have load bandwidth e.g. a 56k modem as accessible web pages often have very fast download speeds (other examples are given above).
If care is taken making a website accessible then a text only page is very rarely needed. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend that only if after best efforts your site cannot be made accessible. Therefore they should only be used as a last resort.
Although blind users cannot see your images, it would disadvantage sighted users if graphics were not included on a website. Adding an alt text to a graphical image can make the graphical image accessible to screen readers. The alt text can be used to insert a description of the contents of the image. The screen reader will then read out the alt text description to the blind user so even though they cannot see the image, they will have enough information to understand the information that it is attempted to convey. The images and image map page contains more information about adding alt texts to images. Other graphical design can be used and often the changes required to makes the graphics accessible are very small e.g. alt text for images, or advertisements, an accessible alternative for animated GIF’s etc.
This is not necessary. Relative font sizes should be used so that a visually impaired user can resize the text to suit their needs, they can do this using a screen magnifier or a zoom facility in there browser, for example Internet Explorer has the view/text size option, which allows a visually impaired user to enlarge the size of the text on a page.
Red and green can be used but they should not be used alone to convey information. For example on forms you may see a statement such as “the fields marked in red are mandatory.” This is inaccessible because a blind user using a screen reader cannot see the form and therefore cannot see the fields marked in red. In this case an asterisks should be used e.g. “all fields marked with a * are mandatory.” A screen reader is then easily able to detect the asterisks.
Both are equally important. If Cascading Style Sheets are used to control the layout and presentation of a web page, then it is possible for users who design there own style sheets to override the colours used on a website, with there own style sheet that contains there own individual preferences. This feature would be particularly useful for a visually impaired user who may be able to read a particular coloured text against a particular coloured background.
Automated testing tools such as Bobby as Lift cannot fix all of the accessibility errors that could exist on a web page, but they can check a site and uncover basic accessibility errors. However there are many potential accessibility errors that automated testing tools cannot uncover, such as alt text that is not meaningful or a colour scheme that makes the text on the page difficult to read. These, like many of the WCAG 1.0 guidelines require a web developer to use there human judgement to decide whether or not the alt text for an image is meaningful or whether or not the colour scheme that has been used makes the text on the website easy to read etc.
Text-only sites can be very useful for modern technology such as WAP mobile phones and PDA’s. However they are not popular amongst blind and visually impaired users, they believe that a company should make the effort to make their “main” site accessible. Text-only versions can also cause maintenance problems for the web developer because it means that two websites are being maintained at the same time, which means that they may update one site but forget to update the other site. It is also quite common for companies to not put things such as special offers onto there text-only site, which means that blind and visually impaired user often miss out on these special offers.
However a web developer can automatically create a text only version of the site using Cascading Style Sheets. None of the content is lost on the text-only site because the only difference is that a different style sheet is used to control the presentation and layout of the text-only page. The text-only style sheet is essentially the same as the style sheet on the “main” site, the only different is that on the text-only style sheet all images are hidden. As it is using style sheet the content on both the “main” site and the text-only site can be updated simultaneously.
Accessible websites can contain multimedia such as Flash and Shockwave, however a web designer needs to ensure that equivalent alternatives are provided for this type of content.
Making a website accessible can be expensive, particularly if the site has already been developed and has to be changed in order to be made accessible. However the cost of an accessible website can be reduced is accessibility is considered from the very beginning of a web design project.
Even if the site is a fully developed site a web developer must balance the costs of making the website accessible with the potential benefits that could be gained from an accessible website (these are discussed above). A web developer should pay particular attention to the economic benefits that could be gained from an accessible website e.g. new markets, increased audience etc.
Similarly to cost it can often take a little more time to make a page accessible, but similarly to the costs a web developer must balance this with the potential benefits that can be gained from an accessible websites. Time can be saved if the web developer considers accessibility from the very beginning, for example using CSS and page templates as part of the design can reduce development time.
This is not true, while the assistive technology support for the Web Accessibility features available in the HTML 4.01 specification has greatly increased in recent years assistive technology such as screen readers is still far from able to solve all accessibility problems.
What a web developer must consider is that assistive technology such as screen readers rely almost entirely on the HTML source code, in order to be able to provide speech output to a blind user. If the web developer has poorly coded the HTML e.g. an alt text for an image is not meaningful, then the speech output that the screen reader provides to the blind user will be poor e.g. an alt text that is not meaningful. So despite the advances in assistive technology support for Web Accessibility it remains the web developers responsibility to ensure that they code there pages in such a way that they can be easily interpreted by screen readers and other assistive technologies.
This is completely untrue. There are many examples in the accessible techniques section of this site that show how simple adjustments to the HTML code can make elements on a web page accessible. For example an alt text for images, a label for a data entry field on a form, using the TH element to identify table headers, using CSS to control the content of pages or giving each navigational link a tab index and possibly an access key etc. The majority of these elements only require a maximum of 1 additional line of code in order to be made accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies.