Web Accessibility

Web Accessibility by James Burfield Consultancy

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Web Accessibility

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) states that a website should be accessible to blind and disabled people. This came into force on 1st October 1999 and surprisingly the majority of websites do not comply with this legislation. The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) launched a formal investigation into 1000 top websites, discovering that over 80% of these websites were near impossible for disabled visitors to access. Read the report.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has introduced accessibility guidelines named the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) under the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which states what needs to be done to make websites accessible and comply.

PAS 78 is a specification setup by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in collaboration with BSI to outline good practice for developing websites.

Accessibility is in the best interest of the website owner for the following reasons:

* Comply with the legislation to prevent law suits *
* Website is more accessible to over 10% of the UK (6 million+)
* Website is viewable on multiple devices and platforms
* Website load times are quicker

The type of code used to develop an accessible website has additional benefits with search engine optimisation as it's far easier for the search engines to index.

All new websites designed and built by James Burfield Consulting comply with the WAI-AA WCAG 1.0 (Priority 2) standard or above and the code is valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0.

* there is yet to be a case in the UK regarding website accessibility. The most famous case was when a blind man successfully sued the Sydney Olympics organising committee for their inaccessible website. The man in question was an athlete!

Website Usability

Usability is all about making your website usable, friendly, and easy to use and navigate. This is not a legal requirement, however, all businesses should take usability into account. A happy visitor is a potential happy customer!

With all of our new websites we make sure we follow best practice guidelines as appropriate.

Think of a website as a traditional shop. You wouldn't make the shop difficult to walk around, find and choose products, and then pay. The same theory applies to a website. Our belief is that a web site should be quick, easy to navigate and uncluttered.

If you would like to know more the following links are helpful:
http://www.w3.org/

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