ACCESSIBILITY INTERNATIONAL

Accessibility Matters….

We all recognize the importance of accessibility in our physical world.  Although newer, accessibility in the cyber world is no less important.

The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both direct unassisted access and indirect access meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology such as computer screen readers.  

Shopping online this year, nearly 10 million shoppers will be visually impaired, over 10 million will have a hearing impairment, and severe limits to their dexterity will affect more than four million.  

Assistive technology is used by many persons with disabilities to access websites.  For those using assistive hardware or technology to surf the web, if it is not compatible with that technology, your website will not be visited or viewed by potential customers.  There is a lot a website owner can do to make their site more accessible, which is good news.

Rules are coming, Website owners be aware!  

We all are aware how the American Disabilities Act (ADA) has affected brick and mortar businesses.  The ADA requires all public business locations to “prohibit exclusion, segregation, and unequal treatment” of persons with disabilities.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) is in the process, working on changes to Title II of the ADA to include web accessibility regulations which will affect state and local government websites.    

Website Accessibility  

The United States Department of Justice will police U.S. sites under WCAG 2.0 Web Accessibility Guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium to ensure compliance.  The European Union and individual governments will also be imposing oversight to the world wide web to ensure accessibility for all internet users.  Smart business owners will embrace both physical and web accessibility for all potential customers by ensuring that their website is accessible to persons with disabilities.  The Web Accessibility Guidelines explain how a website should be coded and arranged to ensure that it is accessible.  

Building an accessible website.  

Use best practices, forms, images and more to build your accessible web site.  These are key areas to consider:

CLEAN CODE is the first step to building an accessible site, programmers and designers need to ensure using clean, quality code.

ALTERNATIVE TEXT for visual elements of a website is important to assist the visually impaired using assistive technology to describe the image content within a tag allowing the assistive technology to translate the description into a clear phrase or sentence.  Well written text alternatives add context to the image, improving the user experience..