Website Accessibility
By law you are required to make your website accessible to
people of all abilities and disabilities. This means that you have
to make the website fully accessible to people with visual or
auditory impairments, learning difficulties such as dyslexia and
those with seizure conditions such as epilepsy.
"The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a
service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by
refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the
public." DDA
1995
Certain test cases have shown this to be a serious consideration
when planning your web build. Cases in the UK, brought by the RNIB
predominantly, have so far been settled out of court, but a couple
of high profile cases in other countries demonstrate that
action can be taken. The Sydney Organising Committee for
the Olympic Games was fined $20,000ASD in 2000 for failing to make
the necessary alterations to their website to make it
accessible to blind people. Another example is the US retailer
Target who were taken to court in 2007 for having a website
inaccessible for the blind and, amongst other fines,
were forced to make a $6million fund available for those
claiming damages.
Not only does accessibility have legal ramifications, it is also
essential that your site maximises its audience, and to do this
requires specialist skills and attention to detail. By restricting
the accessibility of your website, you are essentially restricting
the number of people who are able to view your website. You will be
spending time and money on identifying and marketing to your target
market. If 25% of your target market falls into the category of
people who require specialist website accessibility, you are
essentially only able to reach 75% of your target audience if your
website is not made accessible.
The other advantage of having a fully accessible website is that
you also maximise the amount of user agents able to access your
page, be it desktop browsers, voice browsers, mobile phones or
automobile based personal computers, again meaning that you are
maximising your target audience.
Our web team can ensure your site is fully accessible to the
latest WCAG standards. Please contact us for more
information.