This article is from the January 2003 Issue of Update.
Put simply, web accessibility is about people being able to get and use web content with ease.
Discussion about accessibility commonly refers to access for users with disabilities. While the primary focus is about improving access for users with disabilities, the principles that guide web design to improve accessibility for disabled users are equally applicable for improving the online experience of any user.
The range of disabilities that can affect the way we use web technology is wide and includes visual, hearing, cognitive and motor impairments. Estimated numbers of people with disabilities vary but tend to lie between 15 and 30 per cent of the total population — a very significant proportion. A 1997 report by the US Census Bureau1 states that 19.6 per cent of the US population have a disability. This report breaks down the analysis into age groups and shows that as the population gets older the percentage of disabled persons rises: for people who are 65 years and over the percentage of users with disabilities is 54.5 per cent. So, accessibility is about widening access for users and then keeping it open to accommodate changes in the individual’s circumstances.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organisation that develops common protocols and promotes interoperability across the web, advises that web designers should be aware that many users are operating in contexts that are different to their own:
- they may not be able to see, hear, move, or process some types of information easily or at all;
- they may have difficulty reading or comprehending text;
- they may not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse;
- they may have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow internet connection;
- they may not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written;
- they may be in a situation where their eyes, ears, or hands are busy or are hampered (e.g. driving to work, working in a loud environment, etc).
- they may have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.2
Many users with disabilities rely on assistive technologies to help them access web content. These hardware and software tools range from screen readers to touch screens and head pointers. It is essential that pages are designed with these tools in mind so that the tools work efficiently.
For example, screen readers such as Jaws, from Freedom Scientific,3 read the content of web pages out loud. They can only read text, so images and animations need to have text alternatives (‘alt text’). This enables the screen reader to translate these elements to the user, especially important when the images are an essential component of a page, like a navigation bar.
Why should websites be accessible?
Accessibility represents an important step towards independence for users with disabilities — it can provide quick, easy, low cost access to services and information. It can broaden the range of employment, educational and entertainment opportunities by providing added means of communication. In addition it can offer the chance to take part in many day-to-day activities that many of us may take for granted — such as reading a newspaper or buying a gift for someone.4
Many different users, not just those with disabilities, can enjoy the advantages of an accessible website. This mirrors the physical world, where accessibility aids benefit a variety of users both with and without disabilities. For example, people who have bicycles and pushchairs will use a wheelchair ramp in preference to stairs.
Positive image for the organisation
As well as benefits to users there are many benefits for the organisation — an organisation that demonstrates a commitment to accessibility can project a very positive image and show that it is capable of meeting the needs of all its users.
In addition, organisations with accessible websites are more able to take advantage of multimedia technologies that are becoming increasingly popular, such as telephones, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and kiosks. This is because they make use of standard technical conventions that help the content to be displayed through different media.
If managed appropriately, the result is that more people are able to use the website in more situations, which can lead to improved services and cost savings.
Legislation
An increasing pressure driving organisations to develop accessible websites is the law. In the internet’s early days, organisations were by and large left alone to develop their sites in any way they wanted. Today, as common best practice is emerging, legislation is catching up.
An example is the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (Senda), which came into effect on 1 September. The Act removes the previous exemption of education from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, making it unlawful in this area, too, to treat a disabled person ‘less favourably’, than a non-disabled people for a reason which relates to the person’s disability. The legislation requires institutions to ‘… make reasonable adjustments to ensure that people who are disabled are not put at a substantial disadvantage compared to people who are not disabled in accessing further, higher and Local Education Authority-secured education’5 and includes services that are delivered through websites.
Other guidelines, standards and legislation are being developed across the world to try to improve the accessibility of websites. The most influential to date is Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the US.6 This directly addresses web accessibility and requires that federal agencies’ electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities. In the UK, the Office of the e-Envoy has published Guidelines for UK Government Websites7 to help public sector organisations provide user-friendly and accessible websites.
Accessibility standards may soon become a legal requirement. At the moment legal action is rare, but not unheard of.
One famous case occurred in Australia in 2000 where a visually-impaired man won a complaint against the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games under the Disability Discrimination Act. The individual argued that it was in breach of its obligations under the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992 by providing a website which was inaccessible to visually-impaired people.
QuickTips from the W3C guidelines
- Images & animations. Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual.
- Image maps. Use the client-side map and text for hotspots.
- Multimedia. Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
- Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid ‘click here’.
- Page organisation. Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. Use CSS for layout and style where possible.
- Graphs & charts. Summarise or use the longdesc attribute.
- Scripts, applets, & plug-ins. Provide alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported.
- Frames. Use the noframes element and meaningful titles.
- Tables. Make line-by-line reading sensible. Summarise.
- Check your work. Validate. Use tools, checklist and guidelines (www.w3.org/TR/WCAG).2
Guidelines
There are many sets of guidelines and standards available to help web designers and the majority of these have been adapted from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These standards, produced by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the World Wide Web Consortium, are generally accepted worldwide as the technical benchmark for acceptability.
The aim of the guidelines is ‘to create web content that is perceivable, operable, navigable, and understandable by the widest range of users and compatible with their wide range of assistive technologies, now and in the future’.
Research and testing
Following guidelines alone is not enough to produce a site that is fully accessible for the intended audience. It is useful to talk to your users. Carrying out user research either face-to-face, through questionnaires or via the telephone can help to establish who the users are, what they want and how they use the website. This will help you to understand exactly what the users need to get the most out of the website.
When carrying out user research it is important to seek objective rather than subjective opinions. Finding out that half your users would like a purple navigation bar and half prefer orange is of limited use. Finding out that nobody visits the ‘Recent Performance Development’ section because they’re not sure what it is may be a useful indicator that this section could be renamed using simpler terminology, for example, ‘News’.
Good websites should be tested with users throughout their lifespan. The internet is a fast-moving medium and all websites can be viewed as ‘work in progress’. Organisations should look for areas to improve on their websites and seek solutions to continually improve the site. If users can’t work out how to use the site, it needs to be simplified.
A useful exercise is to identify a handful of common tasks that you expect users to be able to complete on your website. Then ask a number of different users to complete these tasks and record and compare their experiences. For example, you could record the time it takes to complete each task and ask them to rate how easy they found it.
There are a number of websites that offer tools to test technical aspects of accessibility, such as Bobby (http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/), 508 Compliant Diamond Demo Tools (www.508compliant.com/tools.htm) and the W3C (www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html). These tools can be useful guides for indicating elements of the site that can be improved, or accessibility features that are absent. Each one uses different criteria, so results for one web page will differ from tool to tool.
But these tools do not allow for the ‘human factor’ of accessible design: they can tell you that an image is accessible because it has alternative text, but they cannot tell you whether the alternative text appropriately describes the image it is attached to.
Finally, it is worth noting that accessibility does not have to compromise the visual design of a site; an accessible site does not have to be plain or be a ‘text only’ version of an additional ‘main’ site. Equally, designing or customising a site so that it is accessible need not be an expensive, complicated process. Many of the suggestions for accessibility are more about common sense than technical wizardry. An accessible site is one that has been designed to provide quicker, clearer and more convenient access to an organisation’s services for all users.
References
1 Americans with Disabilities. US Census Bureau, 1997 (www.census.gov/hhes/www/disable/sipp/disab97/ds97
t1.html).
2 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/) (working draft of version 2 available at: www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/).
3 Jaws for Windows overview (www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_
jaws.asp)
4 What is accessibility? Macromedia (www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibility/getting
started/accessibility.html).
5 The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act. Techdis (www.techdis.ac.uk/resources/skill01.html).
6 Section 508 (www.section508.gov/).
7 Guidelines for UK Government Websites. Office of the e-Envoy (www.e-envoy.gov.uk/webguidelines.htm).
Juliet Owen is Web Editor at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.