Website Accessibility and Usability
Is your website legal? Many companies think about advertising standards, copyright, and potentially corrupting content when considering the law. Even though the web offers a great potential for people with disabilities, this potential is still largely unrealised. Most sites can only be navigated using a mouse, and only a very small percentage of video or multimedia content has been captioned for the deaf. What do people do if they can’t use a mouse? And what if web developers use graphics only instead of text?
There is a law which came into force in 1995 that affects everyone who deals with the public in the UK, including organisations providing information and services over the internet. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) makes it unlawful to provide a service that is not accessible to everybody. It is irrelevant whether the service is provided with or without payment.
The implications for your organisation of having a website that is accessible to disabled visitors is not just that you are conforming to the law. You will be building a reputation for being caring, as well as delivering your message to a significantly wider audience bearing in mind that 20% of the world’s population has some kind of disability. In the UK there are 8.5 million adults registered as disabled, with 2 million registered as blind or visually impaired.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide an international set of standards, set by the Worldwide Web Consortium (w3C) which is the governing body of the web. Version 2.0 of these guidelines is based on following four principles:
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Perceivable: Availability to people with vision or hearing difficulties through the browser or assistive technology, such as screen readers (a software application that enables people with severe visual impairments to use a computer).
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Operable: Allowing users to interact with all aspects of the content by using a mouse, keyboards or assistive device.
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Understandable: Clear content with no room for confusion or ambiguity.
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Robust: Content is accessible to a wide range of technologies, including assistive ones.
When the W3C logo is displayed on a web page it means that the web developer has checked that the content conforms to above standards against widely available validation tools before this is published.
We need to be generally aware of principles of accessible design so we can make sure these are adhered to by the web designer. Some of the key principles include:
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Providing alternative text to images such that blind people can have the text read to them.
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Providing a summary to the content of each chart and graph.
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Using methods for skipping over navigation links to get to main content of page.
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Ensuring that all information conveyed with colour is also conveyed in the absence of colour.
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Avoiding causing content to blink, flicker, or move.
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Providing text-only pages with equivalent information or functionality when accessibility cannot be accomplished in any other way.
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Verifying accessibility using available tools.
Web usability is about happier and more efficient users, whilst web accessibility is about increasing number of users.
In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the web:
“The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect”.
For further information on web accessibility and usability visit:
For further information please contact VAC's ICT Outreach Project:
Mary Sakho
T: 020 7284 6573
E: Mary Sakho
To find out more about the work of the ICT Hub for the voluntary and community sector, visit www.icthub.org.uk where you can find articles on the subject of developing your ICT strategy and a range of other ICT issues besides.
Page last updated: July 1, 2008
