Website Design

Website Accessibility

Websites should be accessible by as many users as possible.

Making web sites accessible also makes good commercial sense; the Family Resources Survey 2003/2004 carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions revealed that there are nearly 10 million disabled people in the UK alone, with a combined spending power of 80 billion pounds per annum.

Making web sites accessible also makes good development sense; PAS78, a publicly available specification developed by the Disability Rights Commission rightly points out that sites developed conforming to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines and specifications are more easily transferred to other media such as interactive TV, mobile phones and handheld computers. I agree! The section on this website covering W3C validation goes into a bit more detail on W3C standards.

If website development follows specific standards and guidelines then future development or changes and training new team members becomes far easier.

There are not yet any legal requirements regarding website accessibility. The two main bodies setting standards applicable to UK websites are:

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) WCAG 1.0

This is the body that sets the standards for the whole of the internet. The current set of standards are the 'Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 -W3C Recommendation 5-May-1999 (WCAG)'. The full set of standards are available at the W3C website, the main requirements listed are:

  • Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.
  • Don't rely on color alone.
  • Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.
  • Clarify natural language usage.
  • Create tables that transform gracefully.
  • Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.
  • Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.
  • Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.
  • Design for device-independence.
  • Use interim solutions.
  • Use W3C technologies and guidelines.
  • Provide context and orientation information.
  • Provide clear navigation mechanisms.
  • Ensure that documents are clear and simple.

Disability Rights Commission (DRC)

THE DRC have published the 'Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites', which interestingly enough is only available in PDF format which is not considered to an 'accessible' format! This 66 page document is available free of charge from the DRC website. The main points of this document concerning web site development are:

  • Follow the W3Cs Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
  • Any non W3C formats incorporate accessible design elements

Following the DRC standards is pretty simple, we just make sure that we only use W3C standards in web design.

W3C WCAG 2.0

This is where the whole accessibility issue becomes even more complex. The W3C have issued another set of draft standards - 'Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 -W3C Working Draft 17 May 2007 (WCAG 2.0)'. There is a massive amount of information involved in this set of draft standards. You can study this (probably unworkable in the real world) at the W3C WCAG 2.0 page. There is another document, 'Understanding WCAG 2.0', that is even longer that the set of draft standards which you can read at the W3C Understanding WCAG 2.0 page. Sadly, there is not a document to help you understand the page that is supposed to help you understand the draft specification! There is a final set of documents - 'Techniques for WCAG 2.0' available at the W3C WCAG 2.0 Techniques web page, this details how to implement the standards.

Altogether these standards documents represent over 400 pages of very technical information.

The basic important points regarding web site development in WCAG 2.0 are:

Perceivable

  • Provide text alternatives for any non-text content
  • Provide synchronized alternatives for multimedia
  • Create content that can be presented in different ways
  • Make it easier for people with disabilities to see and hear content

Operable

  • Make all functionality available from a keyboard
  • Provide users with disabilities enough time to read and use content
  • Do not create content that is known to cause seizures
  • Provide ways to help users with disabilities navigate

Understandable

  • Make text content readable and understandable
  • Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways
  • Help users avoid and correct mistakes that do occur


Robust

  • Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents

If we ignore the content of WCAG2.0 - it is unworkable, unreasonable and just plain daft, and concentrate on the main topics listed above, then we can carry on creating accessible websites within the bounds of practicality!

Scaleability

It is very arrogant for web designers to fix the size of the text in their web pages. I know why they do it - to make sure that their intricate designs always look like they want them to. What happens when a visitor want to increase (or decrease) the size of the text? Nothing! All our websites will be fully scaleable - if a visitor wants or needs to use the largest possible text face then our sites will still display correctly.

Scaling images is a different kettle of fish! We make sure that any images we use will display correctly, regardless of sizing chosen by the visitor. We can produce websites with scalable images but this is very expensive!

W3C Validated Website