Resources - Web Accessibility

Make your web pages accessible to all

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." Tim Berners-Lee

This page contains valuable links and information on why you should make your pages accessible to all types of users and how to achieve this. This is not only just good practice, but it is also a legal requirement.

Acronym alert!

DRC - Disability Rights Commission
DDA - Disability Discrimination Act
WAI - Web Accessibility Initiative (by W3C)
WCAG - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Essential Reading

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The defacto site for those wishing to get a good grasp of why accessibility is important and what to do to make your pages accessible. If you find their text a little bewildering (!), their WAI resources section is as good a place to start at as any. A must read is also their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Page developers already familiar with accessibility, may wish to jump straight to their WAI Checkpoint List - aim for at least priority 1 and some if not all of priority 2, with priority 3 being the 'ideal'.

DRC Web Accessibility Investigation - Full Report (14 April 2004, PDF 400k)

The official DRC report which has caused all the controversy of late.

Recommended Reading

DRC/DDA Code of Practice

This includes a summary by Trenton Moss, with all the essential links, including the DRC code of practice (PDF 660k) and various acts since 1999.

Web Accessibility: No More Mr Nice Guy

News piece by David Travis (UserFocus) on the significance of the recent Disability Rights Commission (DRC) Report.

Sydney Olympics 2000- Bruce Maguire Case

You can be sued... read this as a classic example.

Section 508 (US)

In 1998, US Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. See also United States government Access Board's guidelines.

They also have a section 508 checklist.

Web Accessibility and the DDA

Article on accessibility and the law. Worth a read.

UsabilityNews Accessibility Project (UNAP)

The aim of this project (initally kicked off by Clarkey) was to investigate the accessibility of the current UsabilityNews web site, and answer the question, “Is it relatively easy to make a web site accessible after it is live, with minimal investment of time and money?” UNAP was a joint project between IBM Warwick ‘Ease of Use’, Visualize Systems and the UsabilityNews team (sponsored by British HCI Group).

AbilityNet

AbilityNet provides a wide range of services to individuals, professionals in the field of disability, employers and the public sector. Conforms to W3C WAI AAA.

WebAIM

Web Accessibility in Mind. Excellent source of accessibility information. Their screen reader simulation is worth a look if you have not tried a screen reader before (you will need shockwave).

Accessibility Checking Tools

There are a number of tools available to assist with the 'validation of web pages' for accessibility. My experience of these is that they often highlight minor issues (particularly of the syntactical variety!) and cannot cope with the [important] 'human aspects' (e.g. meaningful text on image ALT tags as opposed to just any text). However, as a tool, they are useful to assist with page checking. Recommendation: use as a guide only.

W3C HTML Validator and CSS Validator

Use these web-based tools to validate your HTML and validate your CSS.

Lynx text-only Browser

The text-only interface allows you to appreciate how assistive technologies 'see' your web sites.

Bobby

One of the most popular tools, now owned by Watchfire. There is a free Web-based version and a more comprehensive desktop version.

A-Prompt

A free desktop tool, which scans your page and highlights accessibility problems. Also gives you the option to fix any issues (auto-fixing is not for the faint hearted though!).

Sample Assistive Technologies

The world of assistive technologies is a fascinating (and important) area. Here we have only given links to those [mainly] assisting with visual impairments as examples, but this is only touching the surface... Nevertheless, if you try out one of these, you will get the idea and it will make you think about the problems users of these technologies often face.

Magnifier - MAGic

Screen magnifier for those with poor vision.

Screen reader - JAWS

Popular screen reader for Windows.

Browsing- IBM Home Page Reader

Aimed specifically at assisting with web browsing.