Accessibility Design Benefits

Many people think accessibility is an extra effort for little reward. Not true! Increasing discovery, access and usability of your Web site for all visitors are some of the major benefits that accrue from applying many of the WCAG 1.0. checkpoints. Back in Novemeber 1999 William E. Kennard, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said:

We cannot afford to let the issue of disabilities be simply an afterthought. Accessibility of services and products for all (people) has got to be a design feature, not an add-on.

A significant portion of those people with disabilities - in some countries as many as 8% to 10% of the overall population - can benefit from Web sites' conforming with WCAG 1.0. According to the Office for National Statistics' Labour Force Survey, UK, Winter 2002:

• Number of ALL people of working age - 37.2 Million
• Number of disabled people of working age - 7 Million

Increase Market Share and Audience Reach

Improve usability for non-disabled and disabled visitors:

The usability of Web sites is becoming a very important topic as organizations struggle to reach, and especially to retain, a wider audience.

Support for Low Literacy Levels:

In every nation there are significant numbers of people who do not share the same level of literacy as the professionals who design your Web sites and write your content. Following the WCAG 1.0 recommendations can support users who have low literacy levels and those people for whom the language of your Web site is not their first.

Improve Search Engine listings and Resource Discovery:

Simply stated, content that is not text-based is not available to search engines or other automatic data-mining applications. Much important content on your site may be "locked-up" in unsearchable formats. By exposing this content you can significantly increase the chance that people searching for particular content on your site can find it.

Repurpose content for multiple formats or devices:

In the continually evolving world of Web applications and Web technologies it makes sense to design your content and service so that it can be adapted quickly and efficiently to meet any new circumstance. Using existing design techniques like those in the WCAG 1.0 will ensure that your message will be readily available to your changing (and expanding) customer base and any new technologies they may choose.

Separate structure and semantics from presentation:

If you markup or provide content that is intimately linked with one particular display or access technology, your content is likely to be inaccessible or unusable on other technologies. The ideal situation is one in which you provide the content (structure and semantics) separately from the presentation of the information. You can then more easily create alternate layouts for different Web devices, alternate views that can be chosen by the client, or let the differing Web devices render the content in the way that best suits their capabilities.

Assisting access for low-bandwidth users:

Providing alternative content that is appropriate for low-bandwidth connections is a market-increasing strategy. While affordable, available high-bandwidth technology is becoming a reality for some Web users, by far the majority of the world's users are limited to low-bandwidth connections because of geographical isolation, underdeveloped communications infrastructure, or economic limitation. Even those living in areas with access to high-bandwidth infrastructure may still be limited to low-bandwidth applications because of the technology they have chosen to use (such as cell-phones, PDAs, etc.) or are forced by economic circumstances to use (eg. older systems).

Improve Efficiency

Reduce site maintenance:

Site development and maintenance costs are an ongoing concern for businesses. Applying design techniques that can reduce these costs is a strategic move. Another concern is the rapidly changing Web technology market; are there techniques that you can apply to help you meet the challenge afforded by these changes? The WCAG 1.0 gives you many such techniques.

Site Search Engine Improvement:

If your customers' searching is more successful, they will not need to use more resource-consuming technical or business support services.

Reduce server-load / bandwidth load:

With increasing traffic on the Internet, many organizations are discovering their server performance may not be keeping up with client demand. WCAG 1.0 techniques can help reduce the load being placed on your server and your bandwidth.

Demonstrate Social Responsibility

Some benefits to an organization, such as goodwill from the general public, may be less tangible than the economic or technical ones described earlier. However, in an extremely competitive world-marketplace can any benefits be ignored?

Reduce Legal Liability

In many countries around the world discrimination laws require governments, educational institutes, corporations and businesses to provide equal opportunities for people with disabilities. This may include equal access to electronic information and services in the same way that physical access to facilities is required. The laws vary from country to country and a listing of country specific laws and policies is maintained by WAI.

Paraphrased from the Web Accessibilility Initiative (WAI) web site. Read the full WAI document. Copyright 2001-2002 W3C (MIT, INRIA, Keio ), All Rights Reserved.

Four Stories of People That Benefit From Acccesibility-Minded Web Design

Many, perhaps even the majority of people who would benefit from web design that acknowledges accessiblility issues would not describe themselves as disabled. They may, however, have limitations of sensory, physical or cognitive functioning which can affect access to the Web. These may include injury-related and aging-related conditions, and can be temporary or chronic.

• The online shopper with color blindness
• The Retiree using the web to manage his finances with age-related conditons.
• The Student with dyslexia
• Accountant with blindness

The Online Shopper With Color Blindness

Mr. Lee wants to shop online for new clothes, appliances, and music. He has one of the most common visual disabilities for men: color blindness, which in his case means an inability to distinguish between green and red.

He has difficulty reading the text on many Web sites which appeared in shades of brown due to his red-green colour blindness. Then he realised that some sites used style sheets top control the color and he could over-ride these with his own. Now those special offer prices highlighted in red he could actually see.

After a half hour of browsing, Mr. Lee makes a number of online purchases. Because of increased readability, he buys mainly from Web sites where he can use his own style sheets.

The Retiree Using the Web to Manage His Finances with Age-related Conditons.

Mr Yunus has central field vision loss, a hand tremor and short-term memory loss. He used a screen magnifier to see text and images more clearly to select them.

He found sites with alot of movement in the text and those that auto-refresh difficult to understand. The scrolling stockticker scrolled too fast for him to read and some news sites refreshed before he could finish reading them. He also found he could not go back from sites that opened their content in a pop-up window without giving him a choice.

Mr. Yunus has gradually found some sites that use style-sheet based design principles and work well for him, and developed a customized profile at some banking, grocery, and clothing sites.

The Student with Dyslexia

Ms Olsen attends middle school and likes her literature class. She has attention deficit disorder and dyslexia.

Her school recently started to use more online curricula to supplement class textbooks. Ms Olsen tried text to speech sofware to help her. After some inital apprehension because of her slow reading, she found she could read along with certain sections read out to her with the software instead of struggling over every word.

When going on the web to research she found some sites much easier to use that others. Sites that use style sheets and therefore allow text to speech broswers to work have proved cruicial to her. The ability to search for information in mutliple ways and the ability to freeze or ignore heavily animated graphics have also helped her.

The Accountant with Blindness

Ms. Laitinen is an accountant at an insurance company that uses Web-based formats over a corporate intranet. She is blind. She uses a screen reader to interpret what is displayed on the screen and generate a combination of speech output and refreshable braille output.

She uses the speech output, combined with tabbing through the navigation links on a page, for rapid scanning of a document, and has become accustomed to listening to speech output at a speed that her co-workers cannot understand at all. She uses refreshable braille output to check the exact wording of text, since braille enables her to read the language on a page more precisely.

Paraphrased from the Web Accessibilility Initiative (WAI) web site. Read the full WAI document. Copyright © 2001-2002 W3C (MIT, INRIA, Keio ), All Rights Reserved.

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