In recent years, accessibility of websites has become one of the key things website designers need to consider when producing sites either for clients or themselves. The aim of website accessibility is simple - to make the information on your website available to as wide an audience as possible. Now, for users of standard desktop PCs this is fine as this the norm for designing however there are other users, often with disabilities, which may be left forgotten. These include conditions such as
  • Blindness
  • Dyslexia
  • Colour Blindness
  • Being unable to use a mouse


What the law says

The prime piece of legislation which governs website design and accessibility in the UK is the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The relevant parts of this document can be found below:

  1. “The 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.”
  2. “From 1st October 1999 a service provider has to take reasonable steps to change a practice which makes it unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services.”
  3. “What services are affected by the Act? An airline company provides a flight reservation and booking service to the public on its website. This is a provision of a service and is subject to the act.”
  4. “For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include … accessible websites.”
  5. “For people with hearing disabilities, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include … accessible websites.”


More information about the law and what it means can be found on the equalityhumanrights.com website with the specific document being found at http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/D...bodies0508.pdf.


So what is an accessible website?

Well, I think this question has a range of answers! The W3C through it's Web Accessibility Initiative (Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) - home page) guide you through techniques of how to make your website accessible. In their guidelines they have three levels of accessibility criteria - Priority 1 through to Priority 3. Information about what each priority means can be found below:

  • Priority 1 - A website MUST satisfy this criteria otherwise one or more groups of users will find it IMPOSSIBLE to access information.
  • Priority 2 - A website SHOULD satisfy this criteria otherwise one or more groups of users will find it DIFFICULT to access information.
  • Priority 3 - A website MAY satisfy this criteria otherwise one or more groups of users will find it SLIGHTLY DIFFICULT to access information.


So, as you can see from this list, all of the Priority 1 criteria needs to be met by a website for it to be legally accessible. However, if you can it would be useful to incorportate as many of the priority 2 and priority 3 criteria to make your website as accessible as possible.

So what are the Priority 1 criteria?

This is a basic outline of which Priority 1 criteria apply to standard websites - this is not a full this and if you want to see the full criteria, you can visit Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

  • Every non-text element e.g. an image has a text equivalent - usually provided through adding an alt="YOUR ALT TEXT" or longdesc="YOUR ALT TEXT" tag to the non-text element.
  • Ensure all information available in colour is available without colour - consider things like saying "select the option in green if you want to proceed" as this would be impossible for people with colourblindness.
  • Identify any changes in language in the document - if you are writing in english and then want to quote some text in french, insert the following html: <SPAN lang="fr">Bonjour madamme,</SPAN> - this is of importance to screen readers.
  • Organise documents so they can be read without stylesheets.
  • If you change any dynamic content e.g. java code or applets, change the non-dynamic version to match.
  • Use the clearests and simplest language suitable for your websites content.
  • For tables, identify row and column headers (this includes any secondary headers in the table)- use the following code instead of <td> to create the header entry: <TH>Name</TH>.
  • If you use frames, title each frame - include title="NAME OF FRAME" in the <frame> tag.
  • Ensure pages are accessible even if scripts or applets are turned off - if not, provide an alternative page which works without the script etc.


Now, although that all seems a lot to take in, there is one last piece of advice here - If all else fails, you can create another page which is accessible and as long as you link to it from the inaccessible page, that will be sufficient.

Where can I get more information?

Below are a few good resources about web accessibility and what you should do to make your site accessible:

W3C - Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

RNIB - Web Accessibility Home

W3C WAI - WAI Guidelines and Techniques

A final word from me

I hope you find this brief (or not so brief as it seems to be!) outline about web accessibility useful. In todays world, the likelihood of being sued because of having an inaccessible is low but the risk is there. More often than not, if you are a business and have an inaccessible website people affect will contact you telling you the issues and it's always a good idea to change your site accordingly (some big businesses have had to do this!). Anyway, as I say this is not a complete listing of everything you can do to make your site accssible but the above links can give you the full picture and guidlines!

Enjoy!