Accessible Web Content

What is Universal Design and Accessibility?

Universal design employs techniques to maximize your website's accessibility to all users, regardless of physical or environmental limitations.  Physical limitations include vision, hearing, motor, and cognitive concerns and disabilities.  Environmental limitations can include distracting surroundings, slow internet connections, and use of old or even cutting-edge technologies to reach the Web.

There's little reason not to use universal design.  Most of the work to make a website accessible occurs "under the hood" in the markup.  Your site can feature rich multimedia, special effects and superior functionality.  More importantly, everyone, including people with disabilities using adaptive devices, can take advantage of all your website has to offer.

Has This Ever Happened To You?

• You didn't like scrolling from side to side to read a page
• You had to squint to read words because of the low contrast with their background
• You wondered if a large picture that seemed to take forever to load would be worth it
• You hit the Back button but were trapped on the same page
• You had trouble finding your way around a website or getting back to where you started
• You wished you could stop the annoying, flashing animation on a page
• Your computer mouse was "sticking", so you tried to navigate a site by using just your keyboard, but couldn't
• You could barely read some of the words because of their small size

The good news is that issues such as these are taken into consideration with universal design techniques. Therefore, you don't have to be disabled to enjoy the benefits of accessible design!

Accessibility Can Help Your Bottom Line

Are There Established Guidelines?

Yes.  The World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative provides three levels of website accessibility.  Level A is earned by meeting all Priority 1 checkpoints of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.  Providing this level of accessibility is considered the minimum.  The next level is Double-A, followed by Triple-A.  The Web Accessibility Initiative provides superb documentation on the WEBAIM website.

The United States Federal Government's Section 508 guidelines differ from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.  Visit The Access Board for information on making websites conform to Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act.

Is Your Site Accessible?

Test your site using validation services that offer free online demos such as Cynthia Says.  The service will test a web page against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG) and Section 508 standards.

Automated testing may raise some false negatives and cannot test for items that require manual inspection. However, it's a good place to start. For a thorough evaluation, please contact Suski Web Design.

Learn More About Accessible Web Content

Learning about the various techniques for developing accessible web content by following the links to the Web Accessibility Initiative and The Access Board is a good start. It is also helpful to see how these guidelines are applied to an actual website. You can do this by going to Suski Web Design and WCAG 1.0, and Suski Web Design and Section 508.

We hope that giving this level of detail will encourage businesses and organizations to keep accessibility principles in mind for their own websites.