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Web accessibility: The basics

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Learn the all-important web accessibility basics with these tips and guidelines

What is web accessibility & why is it important?

Web accessibility is about making your website accessible to all Internet users (both disabled and non-disabled), regardless of what browsing technology they're using. In addition to complying with the law, an accessible website can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business.

Please read the articles, Benefits of an accessible website - part 1 and Benefits of an accessible website - part 2 for more about the importance of web accessibility.

Your website must be able to function with all different browsing technologies

• Lynx browser - Text-only browser with no support for tables, CSS, images, JavaScript, Flash or audio and video content
• WebTV - 560px in width with horizontal scrolling not available
• Screen reader - Page content read aloud in the order it appears in the HTML document
• Handheld device - Very small screen with limited support for JavaScript and large images
• Screen magnifier - As few as three to four words may be able to appear on the screen at any one time
• Slow connection (below 56kb) - Users may turn off images to enable a faster download time
• 1600px screen width - Very wide screen

This basically means that to ensure your website is accessible to everyone you must provide alternatives to:

• Images - in the form of ALT text
• JavaScript - through the <noscript> tag
• Flash - with HTML equivalents
• Audio & video - by using subtitles or written transcripts

For enhanced website accessibility you must also be careful how your pages look when support for CSS and/or tables has been removed.

There are two good ways you can check your website is accessible for all these:

• Download the Opera browser and read this article on checking web accessibility with Opera
• Download the Lynx browser and see if you can successfully access every part of your website

Forms need to be accessible to all web users

When a web user fills out a form it's a great thing. People fill out forms to:

• Buy a product
• Sign up to a newsletter
• Ask a question

These are the goals of your website! A site visitor may look through your site, decides he likes what he sees and tries to sign up to your newsletter.

...But the form isn't accessible to him so he clicks away and you lose a potential customer. Most forms on the web suffer from accessibility issues. The two main reasons for this are:

• Prompt text is incorrectly positioned
• Prompt text is unassigned to form items

(Prompt text is the text that appears next to each form item, for example, ‘name’, ‘e-mail’, ‘comments’)

To find out more please read our article about Making accessible forms.

It should be easy for all users to quickly process the content on your website

We generally don't read web pages. We scan, trying to find what we're looking for as quickly as possible. On a regular monitor, we scroll down the page looking at the items that stand out from the rest of the text: headings, links, bold text and bullet points. Non-keyboard and visually impaired users often scan pages by tabbing between headings or links.

To ensure the accessibility of your website, use headings, links, bold text and bullet points and make sure they contain descriptive text. For example, never use ‘click here’ for link text.

Structure and presentation should be completely separated

By separating structure and presentation your website will be accessible to and ready for the future of the Internet: PDAs, mobile phones, in-car browsers, WebTV and 1600px screens.

The structure of a document is how it is organised, usually with navigational menu items, headings, sub-headings, paragraphs, lists, and links. The presentation of a document is how these words and images are presented to the end user.

The main principle behind this accessibility guideline is to use CSS and not tables to lay out your web pages. Check out our CSS resources area for how to use CSS to increase your website's accessibility.

There's more to separating structure and presentation than just laying your web pages out with CSS. Have a look at this HTML element list that tells you which elements are structural and which are presentational. For optimal web accessibility, you can, and should, avoid using presentational elements as they may cause your website to become less accessible to certain users.

The end user should have control over your web pages

All web users have unique requirements for how they use the Internet, depending on the kind of browser they're using or any kind of handicap or disability they may have. By handing control back to your users you'll enhance your website's accessibility and you site visitors will be able to use your website in the way that best suits them.

This accessibility guideline could mean allowing users to resize text, warning them when links are going to open in a new window, or providing a link at the top of the screen that takes the user directly to the page content.

This article was written by Trenton Moss, founder of Webcredible, a web usability and accessibility consultancy. He's extremely good at usability testing and knows an awful lot about the user centered design process.