What's all this about accessibility?
Everyone has the right to expect a good web experience, regardless of disability. To be fully used by people of different abilities using a variety of technologies, careful consideration has to be given to how a website is put together.
The Disability Discrimination Act has also now been implemented in full and covers services offered through websites. Organisations need to make sure that their sites are accessible to people with disabilities (or that alternative arrangements are in place), so that they can benefit same level of service as any other customer.
The voluntary sector has been concerned with accessibility for some time, as many organisations have disability issues at their core. As a sector, however, it doesn't do better than any other when it comes to creating accessible websites. This isn't surprising - building them is a specialist and technical task.
Sounds pricey - what are the benefits?
If you're about to re-design your website or build a new one, it shouldn't cost you much more to make it fully accessible, and you'll get a much better site all round:
- It will work on varying platforms - different computer setups, hand-held devices, (e.g. mobile phones), web TV sets and screen readers - so more people will be able to use it.
- It will be ‘google-friendly’ - because search engines like accessible sites.
- It will be more future-proof - fully accessible sites stick to web standards, so they're much less likely to fall apart as technology changes.