Accessible web design Leeds: Make your website accessible and DDA compliant

Accessible web design: WAI accessibility compliance and regulatory standards for the web

Web site accessibility is often a feature neglected in web design and statistics show that between 80 and 90% of web sites fail to comply even with WCAG/WAI regulatory standards for providing accessible web sites to those who need them, and are non-compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). Accessible web design, is about much more than doing the minimum in order to stay within the law though, it is also a social and moral responsiblilty to ensure that as many people as possible have access to your web site. Accessible web design is also about more than just serving the needs of one community. The principle behind it is one of inclusivity rather than ghetto-isation. This can include features such as making websites accessible to PDAs and mobile phones, as well as to anybody who requires some sort of cognitive, visual or motor assistance to obtain a rich experience from your website. This should be done, moreover, without marginalising able-bodied users either.

Accessible web design business case: There is also a strong business case for opting for an accessible web site. It will attract more visitors to your site, who wouldn't otherwise have been able to engage with it, and retain them. Moreover, providing a web site that is inclusive and can be used by a wider demographic can be beneficial to your traffic, your sales, the legitimacy and authority your site carries, and the buzz and kudos it exudes. This is of course a search engine marketing goal, and yet while many people rave about the benefits of SEO/SEM, they simultaneously willfilly neglect accessibility. But don't just take our word about the business argument for web accessibility. The W3C have compiled a comprehensive web accessibility business case which you can read here.

Web accessiblity standards: Government organisations in the UK are expected adhere to WAI Priority 1 (A) as minimum, and for many universities in the UK the standard benchmark is Priority 2 (AA). There is some dispute in the industry as to whether W3C Priority 3 (AAA) actually exists, since many of the manual checks are subjective, and while a site may claim to have attained WAI Priority 3 (AAA), their implementation of website accessibility will never satisfy all the criteria from all perspectives.

We offer web sites optimised for web site accessibility so that your website is more intelligible to, and user-friendly for, the visually impaired and anyone with special mobility requirements. This means you can have both the peace of mind of knowing that your are compliant with the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act), and that you can harness the associated benefits of providing an accessible website coded to the standards set by the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Design benefits of web site accessibility: The good news is that many of these features are also useful for making you site more visible to search engines, that the service is not significantly more expensive than conventional web design, and need not have any impact upon the look and feel of your site for the able-bodied. In fact, web accessibility really goes hand-in-hand with good levels of usablity and navigability; features which will benefit all of your web site visitors.

Web marketing benefits of web site accessibility: You could reach around 8% more of your potential customers by opting for an accessible web design solution and be rest-assured that your web site complies with the Disability Discrimination Act and meets recognised ethical and professional standards for the web.

Websites can be made compliant with three levels of Web Accessibility Initiative compliance: WAI A (priority 1), WAI AA (priority 2) or WAI AAA (priority 3) depending on your budget and requirements.

Some of the basic web accessibility concerns that your website needs to address are as follows:

• colour safety/colour contrast
• alternative text for images and links as minimum
• avoid repetition on link texts
• provide information about pop-ups or pop-unders
• avoid blinking text or high-speed Flash or .gif animation
• ensure cross-browser compatibility
• when using JavaScript make sure you include keyboard event handlers and well as mouse event handlers

Some Enhanced features:

• Pure CSS design or summary descriptions for tables
• set tab order for navigation
• use accesskeys as alternatives to mouse-clicks for hyperlinks
• text-only version
• acronym and abbreviation tags
• alternative text to describe scripts, applets etc

We can also offer:

• stylesheets for PDA view
• stylesheets for print view
• stylesheets for internet television
• stylesheets for text-only view
• and much else...

Customise your computer to make it easier to use with the help of AbilityNet's My Computer My Way

WAI Web Accessibility Standards - some information

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0 was published in 1999. It consists of

1. 15 Priority 1 checkpoints
2. 29 Priority 2 checkpoints
3. 18 Priority 3 checkpoints

Level AA compliance is a practical working standard for companies. It is arguably impossible to meet Level AAA compliance to a completely perfect level, although many sites display the logo - there is far too much disagreement in the industry about how the checkpoints ought to be interpreted. The DRC in its study of 1000 websites found no websites meeting Level AAA. Meeting all Priority 2 checkpoints also includes writing valid W3C HTML.