Why is it important to make websites accessible for visitors with disabilities?
Accessibility issues are all very interesting, but why should a site owner accommodate them and what are the implications of doing so? The fact that it is possible to ensure a website is accessible to far more visitors with disabilities by relatively simple means, really should mean that there is no need not to.
Making a site accessible simply means approaching a web designer that has some awareness of these issues. Some site owners insist a designer take a particular approach contradicting techniques that would otherwise increase their site's accessibility. If you are advised against an approach, then it would be prudent to follow this advice. You are potentially limiting your site from a large number of the populace. For instance, consider the increasing number of mature visitors that, at the risk of making broad statements, suffer some degree of visual impairment or limited motor function. A case covering a high profile website in Australia exemplifies the implications of failing to consider accessibility issues; a blind man took the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games to court because their website was inaccessible to him. It is generally considered that it is only a matter of time before a similar case arises in the UK. It is far better to tackle the issues at the outset than pay to re-design the site at a later date.
The term 'accessibility' when applied to websites is generally associated with disabled visitors. The Internet has done a great deal to open up the world to the average person. It is possible to buy goods online and get them delivered, chat with people of similar interests and access more information than we would ever have thought possible ten years ago. In an ideal world, this should be available to everyone. Unfortunately, a vast number of websites out there are inaccessible to visitors with disabilities.
Perhaps the most obvious disability one would associate with website usage, is visual impairment. Of course, there are varying degrees of visual disability from total through to colour blindness.
Where vision is impaired to a high degree, a visitor might use a screen reader. Screen readers installed on a computer, allow users with severely impaired vision to access the output of various software including web browsers. The screen reader describes what is happening on screen by speaking to the user. Instead of using a mouse, the user operates the computer through normal keyboard and shortcut functions. Separating content from visual design can only benefit these kind of applications. The screen reader does not need to trawl through code extraneous to the content in order to deliver its message. Inappropriate use of tables, images and poorly constructed navigation systems hinder the user from navigating to and digesting the required information.
For those with less severe visual impairments, issues still arise. Some visitors may need to adjust the font size of a page. If the pages are built with this in mind, it can be possible for the visitor to adjust the font size from the browser. Contrast between foreground and background can also cause problems for some visual conditions. Visitors may have specially devised stylesheets that render fonts and backgrounds in colours that provide optimum legibility. The visitor should be able to make these changes without destroying the page structure.
As well as accommodating visitors with visual disabilities, it is prudent to consider those who experience limited motor function. Clicking a mouse button and navigating a mouse pointer across a page to a link are all things many of us take for granted. However, we all must have experienced frustration when we mis-click a button that is too small. Approaching web site design bearing these factors in mind enable us to consider the physical sizing of interactive areas and offer the visitor the alternative of using the keyboard to navigate the page and not to rely solely on the mouse.