The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web
There are around 10 million people with disabilities in the UK alone. Making your website accessible allows your content to be more easily perceived, understood and navigated by all your visitors (and potential customers!) let alone opening up your business to the disabled market with an annual £50billion disposable income.
Providing an accessible website is also the law. It has been a legal requirement for UK websites to be accessible since 1999. There are no strict guidelines or black and white rules for this, but the law states websites are expected to make "reasonable adjustments" to ensure their content is accessible to everybody, regardless of ability.
Web accessibility is not only important on ethical and legal grounds, but has proven itself to be a financially beneficial business decision.
Accessibility is very much thought of as something implemented into a site for people with severe physical disabilities, many people overlook cognitive disabilities, people with colour blindness, 'silver surfers', dyslexics... The list goes on, but the message is simple - an accessible website benefits all.
I became interested in accessibility five years ago when I first started studying Multimedia. Although several fellow students had many different physical disabilities and used a diverse range of assistive technology, I recognised the importance of an easy to use website from my early home life with two middle aged parents - one who is colour blind and one who was a 'technophobe'. Since, I have gained a first class honours degree in Multimedia Computing with an award from the British Computer Society for my final year project of an Accessible E-Commerce website. I now work for BarnesGraham as an Accessible Front-End Developer with my main interests in accessibly, usability, web semantics and SEO.
This blog will be used to discuss and muse over information and news about accessibility, current trends, how we're implementing it at BarnesGraham and how it can benefit you. Please feel free to comment if any information proves interesting or raises any questions.
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