Accessible Website Design - What's in it for me ?

For many government agencies, website accessibility is a necessary CYA, often reduced to a tick on a box in a requirements spec.  But as I'll explain, it actually means much more and understanding its importance applies to the wider community.

Since the Maguire vs SOCOG case in 2000, several government departments have been wary of being sued for not providing websites that can be used by people with disabilities under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).  In an equalitarian world, and with Australia's ageing demographic, this is becoming increasingly important.  Every website should consider users who require assistive technologies for web browsing.  This includes visually impaired users who require use of text-to-speech and text-to-Braille hardware, colour blind users and users who may lack the ability to control a mouse precicely.  With more and more focus on multimedia, websites with lots of audio and video may require to consider the use of close captions or sign language alternatives for deaf and hard of hearing users.  I was born before the Internet age, but I know how pervasive the Internet has become, so I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to imagine a world where I couldn't use the web.

To be accessible, a web developer and web designer and content management system all need to collaborate to produce sites to accessibility principles.  These web standards are defined by the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C under the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and include three levels - A, double A (AA) and triple A (AAA).  A provides a basic level of accessibility, whereas AAA is the highest and most difficult to achieve. 

From a technical point of view, this requires writing semantic markup, Data Type Definitions, Schemas, semantic hyperlinking, ALT tags for images, avoiding frames, CSS and tableless layouts as well as user agents and short-cuts for screen readers.  The Victorian Government has a great online resource in the Accessibility Toolkit.  This stuff is certainly beyond your small web shops.  However at the same time, the cost of buidling accessible websites, due in part to WAI compliant content management frameworks like Freestyler, is getting more affordable all the time. 

Datalink implements this sort of attention to detail to helps future proof websites from changes to technology (such as mobile and convergent devices).  Some notable examples of highly accessble websites include the City of Boroondara, Wyndham City Council and Optometrists Association of Australia.  There are a lot of blogs and resources out there to help build a business case for web accessibility.  Besides the social obligation, there are real benefits which offer great value for money.  It helps you to reach the widest audience possible (increasing your market penetration), helps to bring visitors to your website through website discoverability and search engine optimisation (SEO) and helps content to be delivered quickly by computers regardless of their Internet connectivity.  But these days you don't need to build a business case, just to select the right web development partner who can help you to grow your business.  Afterall, in today's instant electronic gratification, these things are just as important in increasing sales as they are from preventing potential legal hassles. 

And as you and I and our customers get older, we can be safe in the knowledge that websites are being built which we will be able to use well into our twilight years.