Accessible Websites - a "Win-Win" Situation

The solution : Developing Websites using Web Standards

How do we cope with ensuring that websites will work on the huge diversity of browsers and other output devices available now and in the future ?

How do we make websites that are more accessible to a greater number of people ?

The answer is that we use a system that is already in place and well defined; all we have to do is follow and implement the rules.

To make websites and their content accessible to people, the first step to achieving this is to ensure that our pages are accessible to the technology that those people will be using to read them. The way to ensure this is to create websites using standard (X)HTML and recommended standard techniques (such as CSS) and guidelines - in other words, to follow web standards.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) state :-

"Mark up documents with the proper structural elements. Control presentation with style sheets rather than with presentation elements and attributes." ( Source :- W3c )

In other words, separate a page’s structural elements and content from the presentational elements.

Web pages ‘marked up’ correctly in such a manner to web standards will work for people using a wider variety of different browsers and computers.

It is generally accepted that if your site conforms to the good practice outlined in the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), then you have demonstrated your commitment to making your site accessible.

In fact, designing to web standards and W3C recommendations is about the best approach we currently have to enable websites to work on the widest range of ‘user agents’ (browsers).

The actual presentation (i.e. the look and feel of our web pages) may be different on each browser, and the details can be left to the individual browser developers or a users own prefered style sheet. However, the logical structure of the pages will always be displayed correctly.

As long as the website has been designed to web standards - and as long as the end users are using a standards compliant browser or other access device - then the website and the information contained within it will be accessible.

Next » Why and how does using Web Standards help accessibility ?

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