Designing an Accessible Website - Part 2

Having considered the central concepts behind making a website accessible and the overarching reason why accessibility should be a thread that runs through all website builds, the second part of this article covers the potential benefits of accessibility to your organisation and the principles that you will need to factor in to your website builds to ensure that they are accessible.

Benefits
From a business or organisational standpoint there are a series of reasons that advocate making accessibility central to a website build. The W3C broadly categorises these as follows:

• Social Benefits - Accessibility is particularly important for organisations that are socially responsible/have a remit which is promoting a social cause, to boost their reach and the credibility of their cause, as well as being fundamental to those whose sites’ actual target audiences will rely on accessibility measures.
• Technical Benefits - Accessible sites which are consequently more streamlined, simple in their construction and more accurately and efficiently coded can lead to better performance levels and manageable server loads (under high volumes of traffic), increased compatibility with other services and lower maintenance requirements.
• Financial Benefits - There are economies of scale to be benefited from when implementing accessibility standards in the original build of a site as opposed to retro-fitting it at great expense further down the line. As mentioned above accessible sites may be less complex and therefore cheaper to build whilst their simplicity and clarity can also help SEO performance, usability and reduce the cost of maintenance. Additionally, the increased reach and market share of an accessible site across all abilities (as well as mobile and legacy tech users) can bring in higher revenues.
• Legal & Policy - Despite the number of legal cases remaining very low, website accessibility is still driven, although not prescribed, by legislation such as the EU’s Human Rights act and the UK’ Disability and Discrimination Act. Within these frameworks individual companies and organisations can be dictated by policy, from the requirements surrounding government and publicly funded sites to the internal standards of private companies.

Areas to Consider
There are a number of bodies who promote web accessibility and have therefore published guidelines on accessibility but perhaps the most recognised as an ‘industry standard’ is the W3C with their latest set of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.
The WCAG 2.0 guidelines are constructed around the four basic principles of a site being Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust.

Perceivable - Users with varying abilities should be able to perceive the content on your website either directly, or via assistive technologies, without the loss of meaning or increased difficulty. To achieve this you should consider providing text alternatives for all non-text content to allow visually impaired users to perceive content via screen readers. As a minimum the text alternative for all non-text content should identify what it is but to provide greater accessibility it should go further and replicate the purpose of, and information conveyed by, the original content. Examples include descriptions of visual elements and/or transcripts of videos and audio for greater accessibility.

The content should also be presented (and structure) in a way which can be successfully interpreted in different browsers and assistive technologies, whilst being clearly distinct from its background/surroundings and therefore suffering no visual or audio interference.

Operable - The website should be easy to use, with navigation that is consistent and simple so that users can find their way around the site without confusion, whilst also being navigable using just a keyboard. Furthermore, users should be able to control how much time they have to read content, or use functions, and content should not risk causing the user harm by posing, for example, an epilepsy risk.

Understandable - In accordance with the concept of being perceivable, all users should be able to read all content and it should always appear in predictable and relevant contexts to avoid confusion. In addition, all content should make sense in its context and be informative so that where necessary users will know what they need to do to use the website and its functions successfully and correct any errors that they may encounter.

Robust - Finally, the website should be compatible with, and therefore pose no barriers to, technologies and tools that all ability users may use in conjunction with the web site. Examples of such assistive technologies include screen readers and text only browsers. To this end, standards in coding and mark up (HTML etc) as set by the W3C should be adhered to so that all parts of the website can be interpreted by current and future tools built with these standards in mind.

Bearing in mind the requirements and principles of accessibility throughout all stages of a website build is ultimately worthwhile for a wealth of reasons. It is not only the most efficient way of satisfying the legal requirements of your site but it also plays a vital role in increasing the size and reach of your website as well as significantly advancing your credibility as a socially responsible organisation. With a healthy awareness of the issue far more of the potential of your site can be unleashed.

If you are interested in finding out more about designing accessible websites then you can visit Web Design London

Designing an Accessible Website - Part 1

While designing and building a website to look as appealing, interesting and informative as possible it is easy to lose sight of the full spectrum of users, each with varying levels of ability, who may be attempting to access your content. Not only may you be risking the missed opportunity to connect with a wider audience who have some form of impairment, but you could even be construed as discriminating against the less able if your site is not designed or built with a healthy awareness of accessibility at all times.

Many of the techniques and considerations that are important for an accessible website are particularly pertinent when actually coding the site, but in order to ensure their implementation can be successful at this stage, accessibility principles should be prominent throughout the process, from the planning and designing, to the final testing of the new site.

Objectives & Audience
The idea of accessibility in website development is to allow as many users as possible with varying abilities to use your site with no loss of content of function. When considering the accessibility levels you wish to achieve on a new website you should always keep a clear perspective on who you are trying to open your site up to and therefore what abilities you may need to cater for.

The disabilities that you will need to consider can include visual, auditory, vocal, movement and cognitive impairments and many permutations therein. It is ultimately impossible to build a website to be accessible by every single potential user but there are basic and achievable steps which can be taken to ensure that your site is accessible for the vast majority. Ultimately the extent to which you make your site accessible may be limited, or at least impacted, by the original purpose of the website and in some cases the purpose of your site may actually conflict intrinsically with some accessibility requirements. It is therefore the balance between purpose and accessibility that you need to establish when designing your site. As an example, a piece of functionality which has the sole purpose of testing a user’s ability to recognise images in a limited time frame will by definition, and understandably, fall short of certain accessibility criteria because the user is unable to pause the content to allow themselves adequate time to fully perceive the images.

It is also vital to remember that many less able users will rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers to help them access online content and one of your aims will often be to ensure that the site is compatible with these programs to provide the full experience.

Defining the size and extent of the audience that could be reached by an accessible site is very tricky because it is not simply a case of defining and differentiating between the conventional tags of ‘able’ and ‘disabled’ users. Doing so would be drawing a line in the sand and there are many users who a) may be classed as being disabled but have no impairments when online (e.g., a user who has lost the use of their legs can still be fully ‘able’ on a computer), or b) would not be classed as disabled but may have conditions such as colour blindness which limit their ability to use certain sites to their full potential.

Furthermore accessibility issues may also be encountered by users who are elderly and beginning to suffer from perceptual or cognitive impairments, young children, non-native language speakers, mobile device users and people using legacy technologies. Research by Microsoft has hinted that the proportion of the population who experience some factor which inhibits their use of the internet could be as high as 57%.

The second part of this article highlights the advantages of making your website accessible to these audiences and outlines the principles you will need to follow in order to do so.

If you are interested in finding out more about designing accessible websites then you can visit Web Design London