Accessibility and Your Web Presence.
Accessibility is an important issue when constructing websites. It is about ensuring that your internet pages are accessible to the largest number of people possible, regardless of physical or mental impairment. We have this in mind at the planning stage as there are many obstacles that can be prevent your site from being accessible. Beware however, yes accessibility is a hot topic but there are people who will attempt to sell you a this as part of their service or as a seperate service when they are simply blowing hot air at you to convince you to part with your money. There are many Web Design companies, plenty locally here in Merseyside, who claim to hold accessibility in high regard yet even their own sites do not reach basic accessibility standards.
We can also provide you with a written accessibility report which will illustrate how your site has been constructed with accessibility issues in mind so that you are fully aware of what you are paying for.
There are various obstacles that may arise when somebody is viewing your website whether this be a layout that people find confusing, the use of dynamic programs, flashing lights, or reliance on a single medium such as a visual or audio effect to convey important information.
Ensuring your site is accessible will not only reap dividends in a having a higher potential audience but it will also be relevant where you may have a legal obligation under the disability discrimination act to provide an accessible service.
At Chiweb we aim to make our sites as accessible as possible depending upon your requirements but we appreciate that there are occasions when accessibility considerations may conflict with artistic vision which will be accomodated if this is appropriate for your project, however we will seek to find any possible way to make your web presence as accessible as possible without losing the artistic impact you may desire.
Many popluar browsers including Firefox and the modern Internet Explorer 7 include user friendly options such as viewing a site at an magnified size or with larger text if the user requires it. It is not always necessary for you to go out of your way and add additional expense for people who are quite capable of using the many available tools and their own initiative and resources to adapt your site to their needs.
We always use cascading style sheets and only use tables where they appropriate which sometimes they are. A cascading style sheet usually abbreviated to CSS is a piece of programming that will define the layout, colours, size of text etc. to create your site the way you want it to look. It is easy enough for people to disable cascading style sheets so that they can view a site in plain text if that suits their needs, or they can replace it with their own CSS program to define larger text size etc.
Our concern at Chiweb is that too many companies and individuals are making a good living by convincing people they need to spend extra money on these considerations when sometimes this is not the case and often they are not even truly adding this functionality yet still charge you for it.
For more information on this important subject please visit The WAI .
