Accessibility

Accessibility on the web is similar to accessibility in the real world. An accessible building in the real world will have a number of features that allow disabled people to access the building as easily as able bodied people — for example wheel chair ramps.

Some buildings, such as university buildings must be accessible to comply with the law. The same also applies on the internet: there are some websites that must be accessible by the visually impaired; and yours may be one. And if not now, then perhaps in the future.

On the internet it is usually the visually impaired who have problems accessing information on websites. Just as with the real world we can make websites on the web that are accessible by the visually impaired. This is good practice. A website should always be made to be usable by as many people as possible.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a branch of the W3C, has a set of accessibility guidelines. By conforming to these guidelines we have some means of making our websites accessible. However, the only way to truely know if a website is accessible is to test it with a good range of disabled people.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 8:16 am and is filed under Web design glossary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.