Accessible Websites - a "Win-Win" Situation

F.A.Q. - Quick Questions and Answers

Q) What is an "Accessible Website" ?

There is no complete or universally accepted definition of an accessible website, but it is usually taken to mean that it is one that will be accessible to people with disabilities.

Web users with disabilities often use Assistive technologies such as a text only browser, screen readers, refreshable Braille displays, voice activated or speaking browsers, adapted keyboards, trackballs, touch pads, and other alternative input devices other than a standard mouse.

There are also many more Web connected devices that are likely to increase in the future; mobile phones, televisions (web TV), PDAs, games consoles, in-car information systems, and so on, not to mention any new versions of web browsers as they are developed.

The more technologies that can be used to view, read, listen to, or somehow access a website, the more accessible it becomes.

Web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities in certain situations, such as people using a slow Internet connection, people with "temporary disabilities" such as a broken arm, and people with changing abilities due to aging or health related problems.

A truly accessible website is thus one that will be accessible to everyone, or as many people as is practically possible, regardless of the method and devices they use to access the Web.

 

Q) If my site is designed to be accessible will it still look good ?

Yes. It is a myth (though thankfully a diminishing one) that accessible websites have to be text only or cater for the lowest common denominator of browser / user agent. There are no good reasons why an accessible website should be less attractive or visually appealing than a site that has not been designed with accessibility in mind.

It is perfectly possible to achieve accessibility without compromising your site design; existing web pages can also be re-coded in an accessible way without altering the visual design to any great extent.

Whether a website is well designed and presented or not depends much more on the talents of the Web designer, and this applies equally to accessible websites.

By using web compliant standards and XHTML to mark up your site content properly, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to present it to those browsers that support it, an accessible website can look very visually appealing and attractive, but still ‘degrade gracefully’ so that it is viewable on older browsers.

 

Q) Doesn’t Accessibility and Validation mean boring, dull looking, text based websites ?

No. This is simply untrue, and is what the W3C calls "head-in-the-sand ignorance".

Websites that are accessible, standards compliant, and Validate in accordance with the W3C recommendations can be dynamic, fresh, full of active content, and look very professional.

 

Q) Isn’t it HARDER to develop a web page to conform to standards ?

It is true that there is an initial learning curve, some old habits have to be broken, and a more rigorous approach to checking and testing has to be taken.

However, websites that are designed to current W3C web standards and recommendations are, in the long term, easier to create and, more importantly, maintain.

 

Q) There are not that many disabled / blind / partially sighted people who use the web, so why bother making a site more accessible ?

This is a flawed and inaccurate piece of logic. How do you KNOW how many disabled people use the Internet ? How do you know (can you prove) that they do NOT use, or want to use, your website ?

How do you know and ensure you are not discriminating against a section of your target audience ?

Actual numbers vary, but one estimate is that there are approximately 8.5 million disabled people in the UK alone. Another estimate puts this figure closer to 11 million.

These disabilities will vary in severity, but some of them can pose barriers when trying to use the Web and to access web sites.

For instance, everyone over 45 experiences age-related vision loss that makes reading small print and distinguishing colors difficult. (Source :- Lighthouse International, www.lighthouse.org)

Given these figures, doesn’t it make sense to provide better access to websites, to ensure that the websites we build are accessible to as wide an audience as possible ?

Also, accessibility is not just about people with disabilities - it is also about ensuring websites are (and will be) accessible on current (and future) access technologies and media, whatever those devices or browsers may be.

 

Q) If my Website is not Accessible, is it breaking the Law ?

In simple terms, quite possibly.

In the UK there is a general obligation on the operators of web sites to make their sites accessible to the disabled, under the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995.

The DRC, on their website, clearly state that :-

"Increasingly, we all obtain information, goods and services through the internet. The design of websites is therefore important and they should be accessible to disabled people." (Source :- DRC website, Annual Review Home, Foreword page)

and also that :-

"All organisations that provide goods, facilities or services to the public, whether paid for or for free, are covered by the Disability Discrimination Act, no matter how large or small they are."

If you provide a product or service via the web, and your site is not accessible to disabled people, then you are potentially breaking the law. Indeed, a large number of existing websites may already be in breach of the law.

In the UK the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) tries to ensure that websites are accessible to disabled, blind and partially sighted users.

The parts of the DDA that are relevant to websites came into force in October 1999, whilst the Code of Practice for the Act was published by the DRC in May 2002.

This Code of Practice makes it clear that websites are included within the scope of the Disability Discrimination Act, and Websites that offer goods and services to the public are expected to comply with the Act. The Code of Practice specifically mentions websites, giving reference to an online reservation and booking service.

 

Q) Have there been any successful legal cases against in-accessible websites ?

At the present time (late 2005) no UK business or organisation has been successfully prosecuted for having an inaccessible website. However, this is likely to change at some time in the future.

There have already been successful cases in other countries;

A well publicised legal case concerning Web accessibility took place in Australia in 2000 (Maguire vs. SOCOG) when a blind man successfully sued the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) over their inaccessible website.

UK courts may take guidance from the outcome of this case, since the Australian Disability Discrimination Act quite closely resembles that of the UK’s own.

UK courts may also take into account the New York case against Ramada.com and Priceline.com, who were also successfully sued over the accessibility of their websites. The operators had to undertake to pay compensation and to improve their web sites’ accessibility to settle the case.

The DRC has stated on its own website that it has already launched a formal investigation into 1000 websites. The RNIB also claim that they have considered taking up a number of legal cases against companies or organisations with regard to accessibility issues on their websites. When challenged, these organisations have usually made the necessary changes to become compliant, rather than risking legal action.

If and when a case does go to court, evidence from court cases in countries with similar legislation to that of the UK suggests that the W3C’s Accessibility Guidelines may be used to assess a website’s accessibility conformance, and may strongly influence the outcome of the case.

 

Q) Who or what is the W3C ?

The W3C is the usual abbrviation for the World Wide Web Consortium.

The W3C was founded in October 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) to lead the Web to its full potential by developing common protocols and guidelines that promote its evolution and ensure long-term growth for the Web.

The W3C is now an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web Standards and Guidelines, and is dedicated to building consensus around Web technologies.

To this effect the W3C also promotes and advocates interoperable technologies.

In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together. The W3C refers to this goal as “Web interoperability.”

 

Q) What is meant by a "User Agent" ?

A "User Agent" is the W3C’s generic term for a web access device or "Web Browser".

A User Agent can broadly be defined as any device or technology which enables a person to access the Web, or some content on the Web. Most people will know these as desktop graphical browsers (Web Browsers) such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla FireFox.

However, the term also refers to a whole host of other devices and technologies which are in widespread use, including text browsers, mobile phones, voice browsers, multimedia players, plug-ins, and some assistive technologies used in conjunction with browsers such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, special keyboards, voice recognition software, and other technical solutions which allow people to interact with a computer.

There are also devices for specific groups of users with blindness or low vision, for instance speech output or a Braille display; other groups of users may use devices with small displays, such as PDA’s or in-car based personal computers.

 

Q) What is meant by "Validation" of web pages ?

The W3C has a free Markup Validation Service that checks Web pages for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards, and indicates where any errors in the mark-up might have occurred.

Developing using Web Standards also allows us to Validate our web pages, as part of the Quality Assurance aspects of a website. A web page that has validated correctly can then confidently display the W3C’s "Valid HTML" banner logo.

Why bother to Validate ?

Well, you would want to spell check and proof read a document before you put it on public display, wouldn’t you ?

Validation serves a similar purpose to spell checking and proofreading for grammar and syntax.

Just as texts in a natural language can include spelling or grammar errors, web pages using Markup languages may not follow their rules correctly, and so contain errors and deprecated (out of date) tags in their code.

Validation is one way to help with the Quality Assurance aspects of a website.

Validation helps with the practical issue that non-valid pages are (by definition) relying on error-correction by a web browser or some other ‘user agent’. This error correction can (and does) vary radically between the different web browsers, and even across different versions of the same browser.

Web designers have historically relied on the "quirks" of some browsers to achieve design and layout techniques on their sites, only to later suddenly find their pages displayed differently, or sometimes not at all.

If we are to avoid these types of problems in the future, then the only real way is for us all to adhere to standards for web development, and validation helps in this process.

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