Web Design & Accessibility: Adding features to websites

admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:22:28 +0000

There are certain guidelines on W3 about web content accessibility which are aimed at making using websites easier for people with disabilities. These guidelines should be taken into consideration by all web content developers and designers. The primary goal is to promote accessibility, but other advantages also are present. It makes your page easy not only for your customers with some disability but easier to use for the ones with no disabilities. It does not discourage from using video and audios but they can be used such that it becomes more accessible to a wider audience.

If you consider a point of using images and videos you can easily identify two benefits from it. The accessibility benefit is that those who find difficulty in reading can understand from the image itself what it is all about. By providing non text equivalents like pictures and videos it can become easier for those with reading disability. Similarly it is very important to provide text and graphics which are understandable when viewed. When using the foreground and the background colors sufficient care should be taken to ensure that the content is visible for people using monochrome displays or with difficulty in color recognition.

If you are adding movie or animation you can synchronize equivalent alternatives like caption or auditory description of those visual tracks. The use of the markup is also important. By misusing markup for presentation effect like table for layout or header to change font size makes the page difficult to navigate with specialized software. It also makes it difficult to render a page if you construct what looks like a table of data with an HTML PRE element. Content developers should be aware that using these cause accessibility problems and must ensure formatting effects taking into consideration accessibility to all users.

However they should ensure that they do not sacrifice appropriate markup if a certain browser does not support it correctly. Using CSS helps control layout and presentation.

It is necessary to ensure that the pages with new technologies transform gracefully. So design the page such that it can be read without style sheets. Even if style sheets are turned off or not supported ensure that you organize content logically that helps render it in a meaningful order. Dynamic content equivalents should be changed when dynamic content changes. Ensure that pages do not become useless when scripts, applets etc are not supported. If this is not possible provide equivalent alternatives. It is very important to remember that some people with cognitive or visual disabilities may not be able to read moving text or blinking text, ensure that you provide auto updating objects that may be paused or stopped. Provide device independent access. It means that the user may interact with user agent or document with a preferred input and output device like mouse, keyboard, voice, head wand etc. You can provide client side image maps instead of server side image maps. For scripts too provide logical event handlers rather than device dependent event handler.

Keep in mind to make use of the interim solutions so that assistive technologies and old browsers also operate correctly. There are several W3C guidelines and technologies that you can make use of to make your site accessible which results in graceful transformation of your page to an alternative version.

Peter Brittain
Slinky Digital

Perth Digital Agency » Dynamic content

Web Design & Accessibility: Adding features to websites