Sometimes when a thing is right, it is right in all
the ways you can imagine. Say for example, you want to do a good
thing and help people with disabilities. So you read this article
and make your web page more accessible. Then your traffic goes
up. Reward from heaven? Possibly, but certainly logic plays a
part - you have made your site accessible to a large proportion
of the population who have limited web access. Over 15% of the
population have a learning disability (LD). In addition, a
sizable percentage of the population is physically challenged or
has related problems.
Making your page accessible means bearing in mind that not all of
the visitors to your web site will be viewing it on a monitor and
navigating with a mouse. Some will be having your page read to
them by a speech synthesizer. Others will be using a Braille
reader. Some people may be using a specialized input device or
keyboard. Some folks just have trouble reading and get distracted
easily. Some are color-impaired. A clear, well-formatted site,
with easy words, can make it easier on everyone.
If you must have a site with ants crawling across a screen and
the words falling out of hot air balloons, then learn how to
provide textual equivalent for any non accessible content.
The Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI) is an initiative by W3 to make the internet
usable for people with disabilities. Most of their guidelines
are easy to implement, without detracting from the general style
and look of your page. Where there may be a conflict, (using big
fonts, etc.) I have made some tools to help you get the look you
want while increasing your site's accessibility.
And when you have made your sites disability friendly,
tell me
about it, and I will put you on my disability friendly links
page.
