Website accessibility Hints and Tips

Basic principles

Accessible web design is good web design; specifically it involves:

• Consistency - for example Using HTML with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to separate structure from presentation
• Flexibility - creating Websites that do not rely on one type of hardware or software
• Creative solutions - integrating other Web technologies effectively such as Flash, multimedia and JavaScript
• Usability - enhanced usability is a natural by product of accessible design

Before we give you a definition of web accessibility it's helpful to explain that it is not:

• Providing a text only site
• Only for the visually impaired or a small minority of Web users
• Burdening web developers with extra work

Definition

"Web accessibility is about designing and coding your pages so as many people as possible can access them effectively and easily"

Specifically it addresses the needs of disabled people, giving them greater opportunities to use and interact with the Internet and hence your organisation and ultimately apply for jobs online.

Business Benefits

Beyond the specific advantage of making your online recruitment process accessible to a wider pool of potential candidates, an accessible website also has wider business benefits, these include

Increase your market share - you will have enabled access to a large proportion of the disabled community, who collectively have over £50billion of disposable income each year in the UK alone

Reduce site maintenance - an accessible site implement well will be a much leaner, more efficient site which will cut down the bandwidth costs you have to pay and will be easier and therefore cheaper to maintain for example if you use CSS for styling your content.

Social Responsibility and reputation - an accessible site will enhance your reputation with the disabled community

Meet legal requirements - there is a range of legislation that now covers web accessibility, in the UK the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) covers website accessibility under its goods and services provision. Any organisation that does not meet basic accessibility standards (See section on standards) is open to legal action.

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