“The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
When the World Wide Web was invented it was not envisaged that it would evolve into the global communications phenomena it is today. Recently there has been a growing awareness about making information on the web accessible for everyone regardless of his or her abilities. The US already has laws in place (Section 508) to ensure that all Federal websites are accessible to the disabled and imposed penalties on all those who did not bring their websites into line by mid 2001.
Although at this present time there are no laws in place in the UK with regards to web accessibility, the main regulating body in the U.K for web standards is the Web Access Initiative (WAI). The WAI is committed to lead the web to its full potential and promotes a high degree of usability for people with disabilities. Because of this, in 1999 the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 were finalised as a recommendation. Although the guidelines carry no formal authority, they are recognised as the best source of criteria for producing fully accessible and useable websites.
It is estimated that between 15% - 30% of the population have some form of functional limitation that can affect their ability to use technological products. This represents an estimated 750 million people worldwide (statistics from the World Health Organisation).
There are two issues to address when considering web design: accessibility and usability:
Accessibility relates to problems experienced by people with disabilities with regard to accessing a web site. When a person with a disability is at a disadvantage when compared with someone without a disability, this is an accessibility problem.
Usability refers to problems that have an impact on all users equally regardless of ability. In other words, a person with a disability is not disadvantaged any more than a person without a disability.
The three main sets of guidelines which can be followed in order to make web sites accessible those from the WAI , Section 508 and the Bobby Standards . All these guidelines adhere to similar standards and statements of what is required of a web site for it to be accessible. Although it is possible to comply with all these standards, a web site can be made fully accessible and comply with all the guidelines put in place for accessibility but it still may not be usable.
It has also been found to be impossible to make a site accessible for every person with a disability. Some people, such as those with a visual impairment may require something as specific as yellow text on a black background which is obviously not appropriate for everyone. The following section lists the ways in which some of these problems can be overcome.
The main problem of a site being accessible and not usable can be overcome by getting the audience to fully test pages with whichever access hardware and software is appropriate to their disability. Feedback is essential in this context.
The problem of different foreground and background colours being appropriate for different disabilities was overcome by providing a facility to allow people to override our initial colours of black and white. Instructions were also included for the main browsers about how to change their global colour settings.
In relation to the colour, statistics show that one in twenty men are affected by colour blindness. (Statistic from BBC Health) This means that red, green and orange will appear to be the same colour. Contrast between colours is more important the initial colours used. The solution was to use different shades of blue as the main colour choice on the site.
Style sheets were used to separate structure from presentation. This is the way forward for designing and developing any website and is being adopted increasingly. It is the technique recommended by W3C for accessibility, but is also perceived to be good practice generally. Relative rather than fixed sizes were used for fonts etc. This means that user can adjust the text size in their browser settings depending on their needs.
An invisible skip navigation link was included at the top of every page to allow visually impaired people to skip straight to the main content of the site instead of the navigation being read aloud to them on every page.
Bullet points were used to summarise information wherever appropriate as this aids the reading process for people with dyslexia.
The WAI guidelines (Priority 1) state that as a general rule, “set texts in black on white backgrounds.” The Dyslexia Association state that a coloured background is preferable instead of white, cream or off-white is suggested as a good alternative. This was overcome by giving users the opportunity to override the colour scheme.
The RNIB website conforms to Priority 1 of the WAI guidelines but fails to conform to both Priority 2 and 3 of the standards.
It isn’t possible to meet the set standards of access for every disability. Because every group of people is unique, they require vastly different things from their web experience. However, it is possible to make a web site accessible and usable by the vast majority of people by adhering to the guidelines set by the WAI and encouraging feedback and extensive testing from the audience.