Website Accessibility

Web accessibility is important because it means that people with disabilities can use the Web. It is also a legal requirement to ensure your website is accessible due to the Disability Discrimination Act.

Accessibility guidelines have been set up World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where member organizations, full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. They have developed a set of standards to ensure websites are built to best and common practices which also ensure people with disabilities can use and operate websites.

They have split the Web Accessibility Guidelines into three “checkpoints”.

• Priority 1: A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.
• Priority 2: A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.
• Priority 3: A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.

In the UK we must satisfy Priority 1 and we should satisfy Priority 2.

You can find out what is meant by these priorities from the Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 . There is also a useful article on the Web Credible Website.

What do we do at SCIP

At SCIP we:

1. Ensure websites are WAI AA approved, complying with Cynthia Says. This is always a judgement call; many accessibility features can be measured, but many ca not.
2. We ensure websites are WCAG AA approved, complying with all priority 1 and 2, and some level 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Again, this is a judgement call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and cannot be tested automatically.
3. Ensure the HTML or XHTML validates
4. Create websites using structured semantic mark-up. For example H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for section titles, H3 tags for subtitles.
5. We use Access Keys where users can jump to a specific page or part of a page by by typing keys defined on the web site. For example if you are using Internet Explorer type ALT + 0 to just to the Accessibility Statement. These are useful for people who use screen readers such as JAWS.
6. Where required we can also provide

How can you check to see if your website is accessible?

To ensure your website is accessible you must make sure the code (html or xhtml) is valid as well as ensure you site meets accessibility guidelines.

There are online services that you can use to check to see if your website is accessible. A complete list of tools is provided by W3C.

At SCIP we used the free Firefox Accessibility Extension; this provides access to a lot of online tools and reports we also check the site on the  Cynthia Says website.

What to do if your site is not accessible?

Not everyone is a web designer, so if you find these guidelines confusing. We are happy to have a free look at your site to see if it meets accessibility standards and let you know how your site can be improved.

Often you will not need to spend a lot of money getting your website up to scratch. Many of the changes are simple. We can also provide guidance to ensure future updates comply with accessibility standards.