What is Accessible Website Design?
An 'accessible website' is one that has been produced so that its content is available to as many people as possible, including people with disabilities, and regardless of the technology that they use. For example, some internet users are blind, some have poor vision, some are coloured blind, some don't use a mouse and only use the keyboard. Again, some people have difficulty understanding unusual words and phrases, etc., whilst some users browse the Internet using mobile phones with slow connections. An accessible website is one that is accessible and usable by all of these people.
An accessible website designer concentrates more on providing access to as many people as possible, than s/he does on providing 'flashy' gimmicks and unnecessary design content. For example, there are certain things that many of us have come to expect in a website, such as elaborate multi-media and Flash movies along with more subtle things like opening links in different windows. Unfortunately, the down side is that much of this technology would be considered inaccessible to some people, in particular people with disabilities, and arguably should not be included in a website. For me, an accessible website is one that has a level playing field; the experience of some has to be compromised for the benefit of others.
I am moving more and more into the field of Accessible Web Design - making sure that the websites that I produce are as accessible and usable by as many people as possible. For example, the links on this page are underlined. Whilst some people might feel that this looks ugly, it does serve two purposes. Firstly, all sighted people are helped, as it clearly identifies those pieces of text as links. Secondly, it assists colour-blind people (1-in-20 men, and 1-in-200 women), who otherwise may not be able to see any subtle colour differences with linking text. Additionally, the text of this website is scalable - many people with poor eyesight know how to increase (or decrease) the size of text on web pages. Furthermore, all the pictures on this site have descriptive 'alt text', normally invisible to sighted people, but which is read aloud by audio equipment used by blind people. Accessible Web Design isn't just about assisting people with disabilities however: I am working towards building into websites mechanisms that assist other people too. For example, with this particular website, people with slow Internet connections, such as dial-up or mobile phones, are able to turn styling and pictures off so that the pages load faster and, very importantly, the flow of text would still be read in a logical sequence. Websites that are accessible should also be jargon-free, have clear, easy navigation, and be free of bells, whistles and other unnecessary and frivolous gimmicks.
In 1997, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web, launched the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to assist people with disabilities in using the web. Part of their brief was to produce the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), now running at version 2 (WCAG 2.0) (please see Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0). Theses guidelines have become the 'de facto' standard referred to when implementing new web technologies and introducing new legislation. The WAI introduced three levels for rating the accessibility of a website: Level A (being the lowest), Level AA (or 'Double-A'), and Level AAA (or 'Triple-A'); my goal is that the websites that I now produce should meet or exceed the requirements of Level AA (as indeed this very website does).
