Web Accessibility Tips

Web Accessibility Top 10 Tips

I have been developing website's for 6 years and previously survived 19 years in retail, sales and marketing (see my About Me page for more info.). During this time I have picked up a lot of hints and tips and practices (good and bad!), this website has grown organically over the last four years and does not represent the ideal application of all these tips!

Hopefully you will find some of these tips helpful, below are my current top 10 Accessibility tips for small scale web development.

  1. Read, Research and investigate Accessibility, before you build your website, its hard to retro fit!
  2. Develop websites using current, standards based languages and environments, pick a base standard such as W3C WAI - A (single A)and make best endeavours to develop up to at least this level.
  3. The W3C and RNIB (in the UK) provide plenty of support and guidance - USE IT!
  4. The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) and PAS 78 apply, read the relevant articles and integrate good practices into your website.
  5. Clear, reliable and consistent navigation, design the navigation before you build the site, navigating your website is critical - for everyone.
  6. Build websites with good contrast and contrasting colour schemes.
  7. Allow users to control their web experience, Resizable fonts (use ems or percent not fixed pixel sizes), avoid overly fixed designs.
  8. Involve disabled users in user testing your website, or at least use browser tools to simulate visual disabilities. Experiment with browser based accessibility settings.
  9. Use Cascading StyleSheets (CSS) to separate design away from the content.
  10. Use the free tools to check accessibility, such as WebXact (Bobby replacement), along with IE and Firefox browser plug-ins.

Please feel free to comment on this top 10

Accessibility is a complicated and contentious subject, however you should be developing a good standards based website that upholds as much good practice as possible.

Endeavour to make your website accessible to the most people that it is reasonable to achieve. What constitutes reasonable is still to be defined in law, but it is still good sense to make your website enjoyable for all your potential users.

 

Resources

W3C WAI The World Wide Web consortium accessibility standards.

RNIB Web Access Centre.

WebXact online webpage compliance tester (replaces Bobby).

Direct.Gov Uk Government guidance and information website covering the DDA

WebCredible Accessibility and Usability Resource site.

Usabilitynews.Com Wide ranging news website based around Usability, HCI and Accessibility.

Usability.Net EU website for Usabilty, good resource but still being updated?

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