SAIF: Making Websites Accessible
Accessible web design
What is meant by accessible web design?
Internet delivery of information and services is replacing more traditional methods. As alternative methods disappear, so does choice. Therefore it becomes critical to ensure that new delivery methods are accessible to the widest possible audience.
Multimedia-rich sites can be inaccessible to many disabled people; e.g. a visually impaired person who uses a speech synthesiser will not be able to 'hear' the content of an image unless that image has a text label associated with it.
Create a website design that is flexible
You will not be able to predict the needs of all the visitors to your website. So the best design is one that visitors to your site will be able to modify to suit their own needs. For example, check that colours, font and font size can be changed using your web browser preferences. If the text size can't be changed, it means your site might not be accessible to someone who has a visual impairment.
Separate layout and content
The best way to create a flexible website design is to use cascading style sheets (CSS) to style text and to determine the layout of the pages. Cascading style sheets work like the styles in Microsoft Word, i.e. you can use them to add vidual formatting to your pages. By using CSS you separate the content, i.e. the actual information, from how you present that information. Your default presentation and layout may work very well for a lot of people who visit your site, but not for all. A user who needs a different contrast or colour scheme to access the information can change the sytel sheet and adjust it to his/her own requirements.