Is your website accessible?
Your website is your showcase to the world. You are proud of it and have invested time and resources into making it useful and relevant. You want everybody to visit it. But did you know that you might be restricting an entire group of users – and potential customers – from doing so?
These are people with disabilities, people for whom activities that many of us take for granted can present some challenges. Nevertheless, these same people are doing exactly what the rest of us are doing – working, enjoying food, leisure and sport. They have spiritual, scientific, political and environmental awareness, and social and economic mobility. So why should they, just by being differently-abled, be prevented from utilising something as commonplace as a website?
What is accessibility?
Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, service or environment is available to people. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published Web accessibility guidelines, focused on people with special needs and their right of access to online content. Accessible websites empower everyone to have equal opportunity to obtain information and services.
Examples of Accessibility
- Textual equivalents of images. Blind users who use ‘text-to-speech’ software can ‘read’ the content.
- Enlargeable text, images and highlighted hyperlinks: Allows the poor sighted and the colour blind to see content clearly.
- Large hyperlinks, buttons and keyboard shortcuts: Allows users who have problems with keeping their hands steady to click on them easily……
this is an edited version of the full article, featured in Work Your Way Magazine Issue 3. To order a single copy or to ensure you never miss a copy by subscribing, please click on the subscribe link in the sidebar.
