Accessibility
This is a very misunderstood term.
Through these next few pages we will try to explain some of the legal and commercial ramifications of the accessibility issue.
Code so clean you can eat off it- Rafe
This is a very misunderstood term.
Through these next few pages we will try to explain some of the legal and commercial ramifications of the accessibility issue.
Since the DDA became more general knowledge in the web community, many people (and in particular web designers or developers with no real understanding of what it all means) have very narrow, one track beliefs.
Accessibility is "not" just for those who cannot see. It is not just for those who are not as physically, mentally or emotionally put together as a "normal" person (although what normal happens to be is open to question).
The whole point about accessibility is in not limiting the information.
Nothing to do with enabling people, it is all about "not disabling" people.
Perhaps more important from your perspective, not disabling the technologies that automatically come and gather information from/about your site to go and let other people know about your products or services.
Lets take some real world examples:
You are on the train and want to check on what the BBC news is. You take out your PDA or IPhone and log on to the BBC website and have a look.
That works fine. The website loads up and you can read all the stories and get all the information you want.
The reason why that works fine is because of the techniques used to make that website accessible. You may not have a physical or mental health problem. You may be a highly intelligent, successful person. The point is, you have not been prevented from being able to use that website.
Because of the way the site is constructed, it allows the information to be used and displayed in many different formats. All the pieces of the site complement each other to produce something which is readable and understandable no matter if you are looking at it from your home / office computer or if you are looking at it while on the way to work on your PDA or even if you are out for the evening and want to look up information on theatres from your mobile phone.
These technologies and ways of accessing that information have not been disabled.
You have a website that was built a few months ago to sell your holiday cruises in the Mediterranean.
The search engines are now coming and listing your website which is great because now your customers will be able to find you when they search for gullet cruises.
Your site is full of images of how inviting the water looks and how beautiful the gullets look at sunset. A real feast for the eyes and a major temptation to get people to bring out their credit cards.
Your site has very little textual information and the pictures have no ALT tags which the search engines can use as a last resort, or any other information describing them.
Your site has been made inaccessible.
The problem is, your site is completely image based with a few odd words here and there. Although Google (and all the other search engines) come along and index your site, you don't turn up in the search listings.
The reason is your image based site has nothing for the search engines to get their teeth into. Search engines like text. Pure and simple. They cannot look at a picture and see how beautiful it is. Beauty is a human emotional response. These are computers.
Add to those simple business facts the ability for people of diminished ability to use your site and it's a no brainer really.
Accessibility is the single most important part of any website. If people cannot access your site, they will buy from your competition whose site they can.