Accessibility &
Standards compliance.
What is accessibility?
Accessibility means that your site is designed logically, thoroughly and with attention to detail when it comes to W3C standards.
Or put simply nearly a fifth of your potential audience, customers, clients have some sort of visual or physical impairment which makes it difficult to read a screen, see small print or use or mouse.
- An inaccesisible site shuts out that audience, is discriminatory, and depending on the nature and size of your organisation, illegal.
- An "Accessible and Standards Compliant" site is not only structured to be easy for Assistive Technology like "Screen Readers" to use, it is also easier for Search Engines to read and send back results. Thereby increasing your rankings in search results.
What are web standards?
Web Standards are agreed by an organisation called the Word Wide Web Consortium W3C. More and more industry leading companies are coming on board and following these standards that enable
- An accessible and standard compliant site is also future proof and more likely to be useable on appiances other than computers - game consoles, smartphones, wap phones, set top TV boxes and handheld computers or PDAs.
- A "Standards Compliant" site is more likely to work and look consistently on all Internet Browsers (more than a quarter of Internet users don't use Windows Internet Explorer)
- An accessible and standards compliant site makes for "leaner meaner code" - the more successful your site becomes, streamlined code and design saves you bandwith, whch saves you money.
It just does't make any sense not to make your site accessible and Standards Compliant. If you haven't already done so, you're competitor will, and may already be doing so!
