Accessibility of websites

Introduction

Part of the Disability Discrimination Act 1999 states that:

“The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public.”

Websites are included in this although there have been no test cases as yet. In the UK the RNIB will support any individual or group who have a complaint about the accessibility of a website. A number of cases have already been settled out of court and more are likely in the future.

The law is difficult to interpret but most Public websites and Further Education establishments are built to WAI Priority 2 accessibility standards. The BBC is an advocate of website accessibility and has some very informative accessibility pages.

Why do we need an accessible website?

Here are some facts and figures taken from "How to Commission & Design Accessible Websites" ICT Hub publication This is a free document and one of the best explaining the issues in 'down to earth way' to what is a complicated subject.

"Facts and figures
It is important to understand the scope and scale of inaccessible websites, below is a sample of statistics:
1. In 2004 an investigation into website accessibility for the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) found 81% of 1000 websites tested across the public, private and voluntary sector in the UK did not meet minimum accessibility standards.
2. A conservative estimate is that between 1.3 and 3.2 million disabled people in the UK have problems with inaccessible websites.

These figures do not take into account:

People with Dyslexia (approximately 6 million).
People with literacy issues (17 million).
People whose first language is not English
Older population - silver surfers.
(Sources: DWP, AbilityNet)

3. 1 in 3 Britons are aged 50 or more, and they are the fastest growing segement of the internet population; by the year 2010, 40% of the UK population will be over 45 - the age at which the incedence of disabilty begins to increase significantly. (Source EFD)
4. Approximately 32 % of people using accessibilty options or assistive technology do so for ease of use, comfort and convenience. They have no physical difficulty or impairment.
(Source: Forrester Research 2004)"

How does this affect schools?

Although there has been no specific information on how schools should interpret this law, we are a service provider, it is a good idea to be aware of this subject and if you can show that you are making reasonable steps towards website accessibility you should be confident that your website will be OK.

What are the benefits?

Your website will be available to more people
Makes your site usable to all
Reduces the web maintenance
Helps search engine rankings
Websites can be viewed on many devices
Browser independance
You are seen to be doing the right thing!

Who does it effect?

People with temporary imapairments
Silver surfers!
Viewers using different devices (PDA's, Internet kiosks etc.)
Organisations who want their website accessible to all

Specific disabilities:

Vision - no or low vision, Colour blindness, tunnel vision and mild visual impairments
Hearing - Total or hard of hearing.
Mobilty problems - problems using hands, arms, motor skills or fatigue.
Cognitive - mental, learning disabilirties,dyslexia, ADHD or short term memory loss.

What adaptive technologies are there?

Screen magnifiers
Voice recognition
Alternative adaptations like using head or eye movement
On screen keyboards

There are many different standards out there for website accessibility but most of them are based on the W3C standards and are called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) . They are prioritised into three levels

What are the three levels?

Priority Level 1 (A) - The minimum accessibility requirements your website should reach

Priority Level 2 (AA) - The level your website should pass on.

Priority Level 3 (AAA) - The level your website ought to achieve.

We will looking at Priority 1 only on this Workshop today, if we have time. If you are interested in more information there are links to useful websites and testing tools on the useful links and books page

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Checklist

The checklist on the W3C is heavy going if you are new to web design and accessibility it can cause some confusion if you are attempting to make your site accessible.

There are two documents produced by AbilityNet which make the task easier to work through and check your site.

Web Accessibility Audit Checklist Word document (53kb)
Editors Web Accessibility Audit Checklist Word document (49kb)

How can I test my website for accessibility issues?

There are plenty of online tools for testing pages in your website, the most popular are:

WebXact a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues
Cynthia Says content accessibility validator
Vischeck online to test your site for people with colour blindness

They are free to use and fairly straight forward to understand. The web page you want to test will have to be uploaded to your webspace.

There are some more links to other testing tools on the useful links and books page

This is just a short introduction to website accessibility and it implications for us as web developers. There are many resources both text and on the Internet if you would like to pursue the subject more.

Note

There is going to be changes to the guidelines at the end of this year, the new W3C WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The idea is to make them more understandable and jargon free and some out of date guidelines will be removed. While accessibility of such things as Adobe Acrobat documents, Word documents, movies and Flash will be more prominent in the guidelines.

Top

Thomas Hardye Science College

Web Design Workshop