A subject people ask about without really wanting to know the answer. Accessibility online.
It isn't a scary subject.
Here is our slim but useful guide about what 'accessibility' really means online.
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) makes it a legal requirement for service providers to ensure access for disabled users. If necessary this means making reasonable adjustments to the way service providers deliver their services.
Websites are mentioned as examples of how services could be delivered in The revised ‘Code of Practice’.
Tools have been built that clarify how websites perform within these guidelines. This is an enormous subject that is beyond the scope of this quick write up. However in broad terms best practice is semantic authorship. The Semantic Web, is a ¹“man-made woven web of data” that facilitates machines understanding the semantics, or meaning, of information on the World Wide Web.
How to comply with the DDA
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published standards and accessibility guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG & Web Accessibility Initiative WAI) are generally regarded as suitable guidelines for accessibility requirements. The WAI has three priority levels A, AA and AAA (levels 1,2 and 3).
Level AA is recommended and level A is the minimum acceptable standard for accessibility. Several articles and papers make reference to the WAI and level A as being the minimum acceptable standard for website accessibility.
The definitions and listing for each level are clearly articulated, and most good developers adhere to measurable best practice.
The WAI accessibility guidelines are actually quite out dated, but can be found here online (linked to the right).
A more progressive set of guidelines that outlines each level by WCAG can also be found online (linked to the right)
The WCAG 2.0 checklist lists success criteria from WCAG 2.0 in a checkable form. The level of success is provided with a link to WCAG 2.0 for information about each point.
In addition to WCAG compliance, people who build websites need to consider users not covered by WCAG guidelines. With specific needs of specific user groups that extend the DDA advice and WCAG
guidelines.
• Older computers
• Older browsers
• Restrictive firewalls
• Little time to spend on the site
• Slow internet speeds
• Varying literacy levels
Page speed
Web performance is a complex space. There are many interesting books, blog posts and discussion forums that go into detail about definitions. The key is to author pages using less bytes, through better compression or caching, minimizing round-trips and optimizing the order of resource download for the browser.
To test
Run sites through Google page speed testing services. Unless there are specific
reasons to ignore results deal with items the test picks up.
Alongside the actual website code, find web hosts that will host the website near the users of the website. Do not host a website in the US if the users are based in the UK. You need to minimise response time latency.
Determine what browsers you will be testing the site against, we recommend
• Internet Explorer IE6+
• Firefox 3.5+
• Chrome 10+
• Safari 5+
• Opera 11+
List browser specific differences in handover documentation.
Javascript
Test that the site degrades gracefully for users without Javascript. List any javascript graceful degrade differences in handover notes.
Don’t make me think
Information needs to be clear and concise.
• Clearly label buttons with what they do
• Use real words to describe elements rather than jargon
• Follow common sense usability advice.
This is clearly outlined in an excellent book by Steve Krug called Don’t Make Me Think. We would recommend anyone involved in websites reads this, link on the right.
Hopefully these common sense guidelines help you, do drop us an email if you have any suggestions or comments.
External Links
- Visit: #1
- Visit: WAI accessibility guidelines
- Visit: WCAG 2.0 checklist
- Visit: Page Speed
- Visit: Don't Make Me Think