Web accessibility means having features that assist the disabled in viewing your site.

 

Did you know that 20% of the population has a disability of some kind? Of course, not all those people are disadvantaged when it comes to using the internet, but there is still a lot of people. These people are customers, and are just as important as all the other users on the internet.

 

While there are many new technologies being used to assist these people in browsing the web, they are very restricted as most sites do not have disability-specific adaptations. For example, there are many websites that use graphics as buttons. Why is that bad? Well, blind viewers use software that reads all the content on a page to them out loud. Deaf people can read transcripts of video and speeches online, but there are few sites that offer these.

 

There are adaptations you can make to your site without really even affecting the overall look of the site that will make your site accessible to these viewers.

 

If you would like more info, you can go to www.AIM.org

Yes, we should design for accessibility. Thank you for starting this thread. It is a natural follow up for my thread "what is accessibility for you". I only design ADA compliant webpages - becuase my clients are mostly doctors, lawyers, detectives - so official companies. I do design ADA compliant websites in general because I feel I owe it to these people. And I will do all I can to make as many web designers as possible understand the importance of web accessibilty.

what do you mean by ADA compliant?

what do you mean by ADA compliant?

 

Here You go Evie: Is Your Site ADA-Compliant ... or a Lawsuit-in-Waiting?

ADA means Americans with Disabilities Act. When it comes to web design, this doesn't refer solely to Americans.

Many people have disablities. Some cannot see, some cannot hear, some cannot use the keyboard, etc. The idea is to create websites for all.

 

Here WebAIM you find more details about how people with disabilities use the web.

 

But huh... you already know what this means. You already design your sites with accessibility in mind.

Our main purpose in producing this website is to communicate, so accessibility has been a main priority. Our website designer Eskymo, has built this site to comply with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Document Object Model and has followed W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines.

Thanks for the info - I didn't know what ADA stood for - thanks for the link to that article - that's a good read - only managed a bit of it today as I've been in and out of meetings, but will continue reading it later on. I've got to give a presentation on Wednesday and so need to brush up on my accessibility info.

Thanks for the info - I didn't know what ADA stood for - thanks for the link to that article - that's a good read - only managed a bit of it today as I've been in and out of meetings, but will continue reading it later on. I've got to give a presentation on Wednesday and so need to brush up on my accessibility info.

 

Anything for you! I'm glad I could share a useful link. Good luck with your presentation. (Don't worry, you'll be great!!!)

As always, good links Pamil. Thanks for that. I wish I had presentations I had to do research on. I give the same presentation over, and over, and over... Did I say is just too much repetition?

I go to a school where there are people who cannot see bright light, although majority of my website viewers love the brightness. I did not want to disappointed anyone. So I cloned Zymics styleswitcher script and began designing websites that will allow visitors to choose the setting they are comfortable with.

 

Click here to view an example