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Universal Design and Accessibility Overview

What is Universal Design and Accessibility?
Has This Ever Happened To You?
Why Is It Important?
Are There Established Guidelines?
Should It Cost Extra for an Accessible Site?

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 got tired of waiting for a website to load

• 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!  (By the way, if you'd like to add to this list, email mary@suskiwebdesign.com or use the online contact form.)

Why Is It Important?

There are plenty of business reasons to have an accessible website:

1. Increase business by reaching and accommodating as large of an internet audience as possible.
   
   An estimated 27.3 million individuals in the United States have a severe disability that limits the way they can use the Internet. (http://www.webaim.org/intro).  Also, consider how an accessible site appeals to the special needs of our growing senior population.  Universal design techniques help make your site's content "search engine friendly", meaning more traffic from this important source.
   
   

2. Provide good customer service with a positive browsing experience on your site.
   
   One of the biggest benefits of universal design is that it improves a site's usability.  Your visitors will appreciate that they can get the information they want quickly and easily.
   
   

3. Generate goodwill.
   
   This is a great way to demonstrate leadership in social responsibility.
   
   

4. Stay ahead of the curve.
   
   The technical curve may be important, but the legal curve can be even more important.  The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.  In June of 2001, Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act required all Federal websites to meet specific accessibility guidelines.

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 their website,  http://www.w3c.org/WAI.

The United States Federal Government's Section 508 guidelines differ from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.  Visit http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm for information on making websites compliant with Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act.

Should It Cost Extra for an Accessible Site?

Building basic accessibility (Level A of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act) into a new site need not cost extra, in my opinion.  Just like using standards-based markup, it's part of good website design.  I can say this because although I may use a web editor for convenience factors, I'm comfortable with hand coding my sites.  It's necessary to work directly with the markup to make a site accessible.  As far as making an inaccessible site meet established guidelines, the amount of work involved depends on the actual site.  And yes, I can do this, and yes, it will cost "extra"!

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