Web Accessibility

The web has been a great tool in improving communication. As the number of gadgets that can access the web has increased a number of accessibility issues have arose. The mobile phones have been a great challenge.

Although the various gadgets being able to access your website is important when developing your website, it is important to ensure another ground of people can access your website as well. This group of people are disabled users. It is important to ensure that this group of people can easily view as well as move around your website.

Good coding practises will remove a number of accessibility issues as most software that assists disabled surfers will be able to interpret good code easily as well as correctly. It makes good business sense to ensure that your website is as accessible as is possible. The few minutes and hours spent making your site accessible will provide some well deserved results.

In some cases not ensuring your site is accessible to all people can be against the law not to mention a disservice to the business owner. The world wide consortium launched the Web accessibility Initiative (WAI) which looked on a number of issues around accessibility be it for mobile devices as well as for disabled users. This was a great initiative which all webmasters should ensure their sites are compliant with basic accessibility. If it is not possible to make your site accessible then providing the information on an alternative page is a good idea.

Tips on accessibilty:

Test your pages with a text only browser
Use various to ensure cross browser compatibility
Use other tools such as self voicing browser to ensure that you content is syntheising well
Ensure that you have no spelling mistakes - transalation software will find it difficult to decifer information . It is also important for your business image to ensure you have no typos as well as gramatical errors.
Avoid screen flicker
Try to ensure you have media equivalents on emages use alt tags
Use linked css style sheets
Use em unit to set font sizes
Always use valid code