Website accessibility Hints and Tips

Website access: Putting in place an action plan

Some straightforward tips for making your e-recruitment website accessible are outlined below: make these available to those responsible for website design and maintenance. There is further technical guidance available in the Macromedia White Paper: "Making E-recruitment Websites Barrier-free for People with Disabilities", which can be found at barrierfree-recruitment.com

Some tips for creating accessible websites:

Determine your internal accessibility standards - Develop internal accessibility standards for your e-recruitment website or careers pages. Refer to the Macromedia guidance and Forum checklist
Develop a strategic plan to upgrade the accessibility of your current site starting with the homepage, the most popular parts of your site and the recruitment section
Use the latest web design software - Software produced by Macromedia and Microsoft, among others, have inbuilt accessibility prompts based on the W3C standards (For further information on the W3C standards see page 14)
Purchase screen-reader software such as JAWS, Window-eyes or IBM Homepage reader to test your site as you redevelop it
Test your site's accessibility using tools such as A-Prompt, Lift and Bobby - repeat this whenever you introduce new templates. Consider using specialists (e.g. AbilityNet) to audit your website
When assessing your site, always ask if disabled people with different impairments are actually able to apply online. If a crucial element of the application process, such as an online form is inaccessible, it will not matter if the rest of the site is W3C Level 3 accessible
TV, games consoles and mobile phones are used by increasing numbers of people to access the internet. Consider whether the information you have provided is easy to read for people using these technologies
Communicate your required standards to everyone involved, including your suppliers
Ensure employees and suppliers involved with web design, maintenance and content development have web accessibility awareness training
Review and update your guidelines regularly to incorporate the latest developments in web accessibility, particularly changes to the W3C accessibility guidelines
Share learning with other companies, through the Employers' Forum on Disability and other disability networks

Intranet access

Most companies advertise vacancies to current employees on their intranet. Ensure this is accessible to everyone. If some employees do not have access consider how else you can make information available.

Who needs to know what?

Senior managers need to be aware of the legal, financial and reputational risks created by inaccessible e-recruitment and how the business benefits from improving access
Web developers should have a copy of the Macromedia guidance: "Making E-recruitment Websites Barrier-free for People with Disabilities"
Brand Managers need to be aware of your access standards, particularly where they may impact on corporate colours and the use of images

Business benefits

The cost-benefit equation

"As the cost of building a barrier-free e-recruiting site was found to range from negligible, in the case of a new website, to only 5% of the original website cost in the case of an upgraded site, the potential benefits will in most cases outweigh the required expenditure"
McKinsey & Company

Benefits:

increased usability expedites the process for every candidate, resulting in reduced support costs and a higher throughput of qualified candidates
Accessible websites require designers and developers to build more structured, robust and flexible websites that, in the long run, are easier and cheaper to maintain

"Our commitment to diversity underpins the solutions our customers value so highly because of our ability to draw on the combined experiences and skills of a diverse workforce. In order to meet our target to increase the number of disabled people in our workforce, we make every effort to ensure our website is accessible to all disabled applicants."
BT

"Our on-line process was built to be accessible from the very beginning and therefore the additional cost as part of the total build was minimal. The site has a text-only version and is designed for ease of access. It also links to our 'Social Responsibility and Diversity' site with case studies and further information on disability."
B&Q

"Many internet users with disabilities find websites difficult or even impossible to use simply because of the way they are designed. Across the Centrica group we are working hard to provide services and products that are helpful to all our customers, and this goes for our websites, too."

"This website has been designed to be as accessible as possible and to be compatible with the types of adaptive technology used by people with disabilities, including screen readers. As such visitors can control the size of the text, the colours, the stylesheets and even use 'access keys' on the keyboard rather than the mouse to navigate through the pages." Centrica website

A number of organisations can audit your site and help you make it accessible.

The Forum's audit and consultancy service 'e-check' can be contacted at efd@employers-forum.co.uk

Remember: Creating a new website that is accessible requires no new hardware and only minimum investment in testing and development software. Competent developers can implement W3C guidelines with no additional training, although there are seminars and guides available.

Making an existing website accessible costs on average under 5% of total development expenditure, although this cost is highly variable and depends on the size and infrastructure of the site (e.g. a site built with style sheets is much easier to make accessible than a site with 'stand alone' pages).¹

"Having recently completed Phase 1 of our Web Accessibility Project, we were surprised at how much had been achieved at a comparatively low cost."

"We found the main investment required was the time spent up front by members of our team in understanding this field and how it could be practically applied."
Reed

References

¹This figure is based on the cost of implementing W3C accessibility guidelines against total web expenditure for sites audited by the Employers' Forum on Disability.