CATEGORY: Web Design

For about ten years now the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has been monitoring the development of the web and advising that websites conform to the standards outlined in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The aim with these guidelines is to make websites, and web design in general, accessible to as many people as possible.

The guidelines don't impact on web design as much as you might think, as they really just put certain common sense features in black and white (not literally, that's just an expression!). Ultimately these features will expand the number of people that can be exposed to your services and products and also increase compatibility with search engines. This is clearly beneficial for your business and for your potential customers.

The main considerations for accessibility are as follows:

1. Where there are images and multimedia content on your website, provide alternative descriptions of what's there. This could be a piece of text that outlines the image or flash video. This is helpful both to search engines like Google and to someone who is visually impaired.

2. Ensure that the colours on your website provide sufficient contrast to make everything legible. This isn't a touch call, you want people to be able to read your information.

3. Design the website with various different screen sizes in mind. Not everyone will have a huge screen like a web designer has so make sure that the site looks good on a variety of sizes (and browsers).

4. Make the navigation system easy and logical. Complex and flashy web content might look good the first time someone visits your website but users want to get to information as quickly as possible. Don't create road blocks for them, no matter now much you like that intro screen.

5. Write simple and clear content. Again, this is something that just makes sense in terms of business anyway but don't fill your website with intimidating jargon. Try to create content that will appeal to newcomers and your regular customers.

This is just a sample of the guidelines, but most are equally practical. Expand your audience and improve compatibility with search engines, make your website as accessible as you possibly can.

Just to let you know that this website has been validated by W3C for HTML and CSS.

Posted by: Sukhbir Mehla

1 Comment(s):

Cameron Stewart

June 25th, 2010 at 09:42 AM

This is a really clear and easy to understand overview accessibility standards in relation to web design, thanks!