Accessibility

Introduction

This week we had a talk about how to become more aware and amend and maintain websites to make them accessible for everyone and everything.

When talking about making websites accessible for everyone the first taught to spring to my mind was to make sure that the website created should cater for people with disabilities such as colour blindness. Although this group is part to consider, making a website accessible does not limit it to only disabled people with visibility issues. One must consider people who have hearing disabilities or motor disabilities. Also apart from people with disabilities you must also consider age groups such as the needs of young children and the needs of old people.

Also apart from people with disabilities you must also lay out the website for different users such as for people who will use PCs or mobile phones or tablets.

What can be done for these user groups?

Color blindness – make sure there is text and context when giving instructions, as if only pictures are giving to the user, he might have difficulty understanding what each picture mean. With clear context or text there won't be any misunderstandings and the user could navigate the website much more easily.

Old people – text should be of reasonable size, and the sound should be of  good quality as this user group's sensed are not as good as they used to be. Also since this user group has not grown with the internet it could be a steeper learning curve to learn how to use it so clear instructions should be given always.  Also make sure if the user will zoom with the browser the site still remains structured properly and not become cluttered.

Hearing impaired - subtitles or the context of any video is clearly explained for obvious reasons. Also all instructions are given in text form.

Small children – make sure you use text with videos and instructions  as without visual instructions small children can become easily distracted.

Structured menus with good tabbing order are very important especially for people how don’t use/can’t use the mouse. Also clear instructions are given to input forms are important to show the format such as when entering a date. After completing forms it is always better to give confirmation to the user so that he’s sure that that the form is filled correctly and the sending was successful. Also when the form is not correctly filled in clear messages to show where in the form it was incorrectly filled.

It is important not to make moving objects in a website that can’t be stopped easily as these can be very distracting.  The same goes for sound.

Tools and Information

Any more information about how to keep websites accessible can be easily found on http://www.w3.org/WAI/. This website provide the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which are detailed guidelines on how to make websites more accessible for people in need. There is also a section that defines conformance levels of the website.

Also there are many tools found on the web that can be used to help developers check their work.

These tools include:

Color checkers to make sure the contrast does not effect color blinded people.

Emulators for Smart Phones

Tools to break down sites to the point of how visually impaired users would see/hear it

Conclusion

This talk we had showed us how important it is to think of every user group possible and not leave anyone out. It taught me to think of a website in a different way, making sure that it will allow all visitors, even with disabilities, could use the website with ease. As apart from helping people in need to access the website more easily, a well designed website that follows the guidelines would attract more visitors, and become more popular.