Our commitment to accessibility
By Nikhil GupteWe at Auriga Logic are committed to following and promoting website accessibility standards. We believe that information should be accessible to all people and we will go the extra mile to ensure that our websites and those that we make for our clients meet certain established industry standards and guidelines pertaining to accessibility.
Since the issue of accessibility is fairly new, I have put together the following article as a primer on this subject. It is my sincere hope that webmasters all over the world and especially our clients understand and support web accessibility.
What is an accessible website?
Today, more and more people browse the Internet for information and entertainment. Many of these people may have physical disabilities due to which they use aids to assist their on-line activities. For example, blind people may use programs like screen readers. People with other disabilities may use other such Assistive technologies (AT).
Poorly designed websites may hinder the use of these assistive tools making the website in-accessible to the users. Accessible websites are those which are designed keeping in mind the common assistive technologies and tools such that the information they contain is accessible to all users.
Thus, in short, an accessible website is one which reduces barriers for all people to access it's contents.
Why should my website be accessible?
Apart from the goodwill it would generate by being a more socially responsible organisation, following are few reasons why you may benefit from having an accessible website
- Your website would be accessible to a larger audience
- Making a website accessible makes it inherently easier for search engines (like google) to crawl through and index your site
- Accessible website usually require the use of technologies like CSS which reduce maintenance costs of you website
- Accessible website force you to adopt a cleaner design which further simplifies maintenance of your website
- An easy to use website for the disabled would translate to an easier to use website for the larger audience
- Accessible websites usually look better on non-standard devices like PDAs and other hand held devices
- Most users today may not be much aware of accessibility issues, however, this may change in 6 to 12 months. Today, most government websites are required to follow certain accessibility guidelines. Depending on your geography and industry, your local government may make it mandatory for your organisation/industry to adopt certain accessibility guidelines
What are the costs of being accessible?
Usually, most websites can be made accessible without any significant costs. You may need to have a few additional checks in your content publishing processes to ensure that changes made do not violate basic accessible guidelines.
Automated verifiers are available that check your web pages and highlight accessibility violations. Using such software would further simplify your accessibility checks.
Adopting accessibility standards would actually reduce your website maintenance costs in the long run.
Some well known organisations supporting accessibility
Further Reading
In this article I have only scratched the surface of accessibility on the web. Following are links to some related informative resources on the subject:
- Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organisation
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
- Section 508: The Road to Accessibility
About the Author
Nikhil is the Co-founder and Chief Software Architect at Auriga Logic.
