Web Authoring - Accessibility
Put simply, usability means designing your website to be effective, efficient, and satisfying. Accessibility makes sure it is effective, efficient, and satisfying for more people, especially people with disabilities. In terms of Web design, accessibility basically means online content that can be used by someone with a disability. Although this definition is accurate, it should be considered as one part of a bigger equation. Making your Web sites accessible does not mean that you make them accessible only to people with disabilities, but to everyone, including disable people. So more accurately, accessibility means making your Web pages accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
One way to start looking at the distinction between the two is to categorise interface problems:
- Usability problems impact all users equally, regardless of ability; that is, a person with a disability is not disadvantaged to a greater extent by usability issues than a person without a disability.
- Accessibility problems decrease access to a web site by people with disabilities. When a person with a disability is at a disadvantage relative to a person without a disability, it is an accessibility issue.
Although accessibility has been, and still is, overlooked by many Web designers in the past, more and more designers are becoming aware of accessibility issues, and it has become a big thing, at least amongst reputable, professional designers and developers. Nowadays, web designers should be in charge of doing web pages not only visually appealing, but also accessible. Ensuring that your web pages are accessible, you will also improve a lot their usability.
There has been a mutual advancement between accessibility and web standards: web professionals have been encouraged to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Extended Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) on the grounds that the combination “increases accessibility.” Another issue to consider is the other ways available nowadays to browse the internet which are not a computer, like mobile phones and PDAs. Making your pages more accessible will make them more likely to work fine on these other devices.
There are some very strict guidelines that have been set up by the W3C - World Wide Web Consortium - (http://www.w3.org/) - which have been developed to help to understand accessibility and to create accessible documents. I am looking very closely to these guidelines nowadays and I intend to get deep into accessibility issues.
For all matters regarding Web accessibility in the UK, please visit the following link - which will open a new window. Web Accessibility in the UK.
There is so much to Web accessibility and it has got such an important and significant role in the future of the web in general.... Web authorers, accessible technology, assistive technologies such as screen readers and browsers, web developers and even the users are all a part of the big equation and it seems that things are improving. Modern browsers such us Firefox, Opera, IE7 do have a great support for CSS and other authoring or developing tools. IE6, does give some problems when CSSing, but the number of users browsing with IE6 has decreased considerably in the last few years in favour of IE7 and Firefox...
All in all, personally, I believe I am heading in the right direction by working hard in accessibility issues. From simple Alt-text, accessible forms, re-sizeable text, accessible tables (if used, probably, to display tabular data), improving accessibility by using good CSS and XHTML coding, aiming to validate them...to more sophisticated accessibility issues, I want to be a part of the new era of accessible Web design and I am working on it. Not just because of the "feel good" factor of knowing that I am doing something positive to support the rights of disable or older people, which is good in itself, but also, on the way, I am doing a great favour to the general usability of my designs and my web sites.
If you want to find out more about how I am dealing with this matter of Web accessibility or you would like to improve the accessibility of your web site, please do contact me.
