Accessible Websites - a "Win-Win" Situation

The benefits of an accessible website

Increase your Visitors and potential customers

Literally millions of people across the world have some form of disability. Some of these disabilities may be mild, and some more severe, and the extent to which they hinder the person(s) from using the internet will vary. Yet these same people still want access to the web, its information and services.

These people also have billions of pounds to spend (it has been estimated at £50 billion in the UK alone) on products and services.

Excluding this many people from websites because they have not been designed with their needs in mind simply does not make any social or economic sense.

 

Higher Search Engine Rankings and greater Search Engine Visibility

It has been estimated that over 80% of internet users use search engines to find information on the web. Contrary to popular opinion, search engines do not merely look at keywords in Meta Tags hidden in web pages (and many do not use them at all !)

Search engines such as Google work by searching for and indexing page Content. They are able to index web pages and web sites more accurately if the content on those pages is well marked-up and well structured. For instance, many search engines give extra weight to keywords that appear in page headings and page titles when indexing the page.

A web page where page titles, headings and other content is incorrectly marked-up, or hidden amongst lots of unnecessary formatting and presentation mark-up code (using old style web design techniques), is more likely to suffer in the search engine rankings, when compared with a page with similar content that is correctly marked up.

Web page content that is clearly structured is thus easier for search engines to find and index correctly.

By using correct, standardised coding and markup techniques to make your website more accessible to users, you are not only creating a standards based, compliant web site, you are also making it more accessible to search engines.

This means it is more likely to appear in search engine listings, which in turn makes it easier for people to find your site, and thus helps to drive traffic (visitors) to your site.

 

Faster Download Times and Quicker Websites

Currently (late 2005) only approximately 17% of web users in the UK are connected to the internet via broadband (source:- Access to Broadband Campaign).

This is still overlooked by some web designers, who continue to create large pages stuffed full of redundant mark-up code, unnecessary ‘spacer’ images, complex nested table layouts, and too many large images.

Put simply, if your website is slow to display, your visitors may simply get bored and look elsewhere.

Well designed, standards compliant pages tend to be smaller (because they rely less on old ‘bloated’ coding and markup techniques, such as complicated nested table layouts and lots of formatting and presentation tags). As such, they tend to download and render (display) quicker on internet connected PC’s, and should also access faster on other web-enabled devices.

If people can download a website faster, then it’s more accessible, and vica versa.

As a side effect, faster loading pages can also save money by saving bandwidth (because pages are smaller to download) and may also generate additional traffic and revenue for certain websites.

A prime example is Multimap.com ; when they redesigned their site using web standards they estimated they would save up to 40,000 Gb of bandwidth per year due to the smaller web pages that were now being served. They also found that the quicker loading pages encouraged people to spend longer browsing the site; consequently revenues from advertising increased.

 

Future Proofing and Backward Compatibility

Currently a great deal of web access is done the ‘traditional’ way through PC’s (personal computers) using web Browsers like Internet Explorer, Netscape, or FireFox. However, this will almost certainly not always be the case. Computer technology, and the web in particular, is a fast changing place.

In the future more and more people may use other devices (or ‘user agents’) to access the internet, such as mobile phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), in-car web enabled information systems, and a whole host of other such devices, including some as of yet un-thought off systems.

For example it has been estimated that over 58 million PDAs will be sold in 2008 alone (source:- eTForecasts).

The number of Worldwide Internet users will top 1 billion in mid 2005 (source:- eTForecasts).

This is potentially a very large (not to mention lucrative) audience for any website.

Will your current website work effectively on these new access media ? Will it be compatible with new browsing technologies as they are developed for these new users ?

By developing using web standards and with accessibility in mind, web content is both future-proofed and made more backward compatible with older browsers. Using standards is the best approach we currently have to enable websites to work on the widest range of user agents.

Pages developed using web standards and accessibility guidelines will display more consistently across newer browsers and platforms, whilst still being viewable to older browsers. Granted, the content may not necessarily look the same in old, ‘non-standard compliant’ browsers, but at least the content will still be available - and therefore accessible.

 

Reduced development time and costs

Part of the process of developing to web standards involves separating the structure and content of web pages from their presentational and mark-up code, by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Divorcing structure and content information from the way it is presented affords several key benefits :

Future re-designs and maintenance are made quicker and easier if the formatting and presentation instructions aren’t wrapped up inside the page’s HTML code. It is possible to change a sites’ whole look and feel (or ‘skin’) with less additional effort by simply designing and applying a new stylesheet.

There is no longer a need to produce multiple versions of web sites to account for all the little "quirks" of different web browsers and the way they lay out pages differently. Any standards compliant browser (now or in the future) should present the content more or less as it is intended to be seen.

It allows the possibility of having different ‘views’ of that content for different users (for example different font sizes and contrasting colour schemes), and to so do with minimal extra effort.

 

Perception and Reputation of your website, company or organisation

By making your website accessible and standards compliant, you are effectively transmitting a positive message about your organisation, and its commitment to inclusion and participation of all members of society.

 

Sites designed to Web Standards can be Validated and tested for errors

The W3C has a free Markup Validation Service that checks Web pages for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.

The W3C validator helps confirm the validity of Web pages by checking for errors in their code markup (in formats like HTML and XHTML).

This is one way to help assure the Quality of a website, but it is only possible if a site has been designed using standards; without working to standards, no rules have been applied to test against, so it is not possible to validate web pages.

 

Staying Legal and within the law

Making your website accessible is not only desirable, it is a legal requirement.

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.

In the UK the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) (1995) tries to ensure that websites are accessible to disabled, blind and partially sighted users.

The relevant parts of the DDA that refer 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 means that a large number of existing websites may already be in breach of the law !

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

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."

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 (and there have already been successful court cases in other countries).

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.

 

It’s the ‘Right thing to do’

Technology should be easy to use and accessible to all - this vision defines one of the principle goals of the web.

The Internet should be about connecting people, allowing them to communicate, to share information, and including them, rather than excluding them.

Besides providing all of the above mentioned benefits, making your websites standards compliant and more accessible is part of an ethical approach to the Web; it is one means by which we can all contribute something to the web, for the benefit of all concerned. The internet was designed to be a place that is FOR ALL, where the content can be accessed and engaged BY ALL.

As more accessible, standards compliant Web sites become available, people with disabilities are more able to use and contribute to the Web more effectively.

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