Website Accessibility

From RSCWMWiki

Introduction

Website Accessibility may be difficult if you're not a website developer, however there are lots of useful links and resources which will help you evaluate your own website. I have also added a few websites which will help you understand some of the technical jargon before talking to your developers.

Testing or evaluating your website is important. Most parts of our lives somehow involve the use of the Internet and it is a priority for education to be able to offer equal opportunities for learning and access to the Internet. The web offers some solutions to accessibility barriers that are often found with print, media visual and audio.

I have collated a few good sources of information which will help you look at your website critically and offer simple solutions to some of these barriers. Further down the page under Links, I have also added a few websites like MY WEB which will show you how to make small changes to your PC, like the font size colours, backgrounds etc.

What Can Be Done

If you need to make changes to your website, the first place to look would be the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and focuses on promoting accessibility on the web - it offers a wealth of information, guidance, advice, tools and resources.

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate,interact with the Web and contribute towards it. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.'

The W3C website is available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php

A useful place to start would be to take a look at the section on Implementation Planning at http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/Overview

Then visit the section on conducting an inital assessment: http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/Overview

Other Guidelines to look at would be:

Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility: http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/pol.html

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

Policies Relating to Web Accessibility: http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/

Executive Briefing on Web Accessibility: http://www.w3.org/WAI/training/cr#implementation

External links

Links to external web sites.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) http://www.rnib.org.uk has an Access Center which will help you to find information on how to make your website work for people with sight problems, hearing, mobility and cognitive impairments. An added benefit is that most of the advice will help people using older browsers, slow dial-up or satellite connections, as well as newer technologies such as mobiles and PDAs.

Other websites to take a look at would be:

AbilityNet http://www.abilitynet.org.uk

Disability Rights Commission http://www.drc-gb.org

Age Concern http://www.ageconcern.org.uk

IBM Accessibility Center http://www-03.ibm.com/able/

BBC - My Web My Way http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/