US online retailer Target.com is facing legal action
brought by Bruce Sexton, a member of the National Federation of the
Blind. Sexton is suing the organisation on behalf of blind people
in California, claiming they are being denied access to the
retailer's online shopping services.
Although legal requirements and a negative public image
represent the accessibility "sticks", there are many "carrots" for
organisations that make efforts to meet them, including cleaner and
easier to use websites (and hence improved customer satisfaction),
cheaper and easier site maintenance and, in some cases, increased
traffic and revenue.
An accessible website can also be more readable for search
engine spiders, which can push it up the search engine
rankings.
The good news is that website developers have access to a
growing armoury of resources for creating accessible websites.
The first thing to bear in mind is that the issue of web
accessibility does not only apply to blind users. For example,
visual impairment covers a spectrum of sight-related disabilities,
from age-related myopia to chromatic sight conditions.
And users with motor disabilities may encounter problems as they
cannot use a mouse, making navigation around a poorly designed
website using the tab and return keys virtually impossible.
Sufferers of cognitive disabilities, such as dyslexia, require
specialised speech output to read out the text on a web page, and
this requires the content to be in an appropriate format. Even
users with hearing impairments can face problems when accessing
unsympathetic websites.
Online resources outline many of these problems and ways to
avoid them. PAS 78, for example, is a good starting point as a
technical guide on how to commission an accessible site. Created by
the British Standards Institute, the document is a distillation of
global expertise.
The de facto world standard is provided by the World Wide Web
Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), whose Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) explain how to make content
accessible to people with disabilities and offer website evaluation
tools.
The guidelines outline 65 check points for web accessibility,
prioritised into three levels. The first 16 points are must-haves -
that is, websites must comply with these to ensure the minimum
level of web accessibility. Those that do are awarded an A-grade
web accessibility certification.
The second level - providing a certification of AA - represents
35 website check points. The remaining points represent the final
level - AAA - which consists of features that are nice to have but
are difficult to achieve.
According to Robin Christopherson, head of accessibility
services at assistive technology charity AbilityNet (which has a
AAA-certified website), less than 1% of sites meet the third level
for web accessibility.
A survey by the Disability Rights Commission in 2004 found that
81% of websites do not meet the basic A certification.
It also showed that only 9% of developers have any expertise in
the field, meaning that few organisations have the resources in
place to meet those requirements.
"Seven years on from the Disability Discrimination Act, it is
inexcusable to not have a web accessibility plan in place. If
someone threatens to take you to court it would be an advantage to
be able to say: 'Okay, we hold our hands up, but we plan to meet
the A grade requirements of the WAI within three months'," said
Christopherson.
The next stage in creating an accessible website is to assess
the existing accessibility status of the site. Automatic testing
tools are available for this task, including Webexact, Cynthia
Says, Wave and the Web Accessibility Toolbar.
These tools can provide a snapshot of web accessibility, but
they are not comprehensive and should be used only as a first
pass.
"You can have a website that meets all the technical guidelines
for accessibility, but that does not mean it is useable. Automatic
testing tools will only pick up a fraction of the problems. They
are good for an initial test of a website, but we always recommend
user testing - including disabled users - in combination," said
Christopherson.
Léonie Watson, head of accessibility at web design agency
Nomensa and a blind internet user herself, said, "The Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines have 65 different check points, but most
automatic tools only pick up five of them with complete accuracy,
and another eight with partial accuracy. They can tell you if a
problem exists, but not what the problem is or how to change it.
They are not sophisticated enough and do not behave like a human
user."
She advocates involving disabled users from the design process
through to final testing of the website, as they can quickly
highlight many of the common problems.
The most frequent mistake is the absence or inappropriate use of
text descriptions for images. Visually impaired users often rely on
speech output technology to read out content. Unable to see images,
they rely on an embedded alternative text description to describe
them.
According to Watson, these descriptions are often missing or
incorrect, and though an automatic testing tool can highlight a
missing text description, it cannot check whether it is
accurate.
Other common mistakes include poorly thought-out or missing
headings, which are vital for page navigation and need to be marked
up in HTML code rather than on the page itself, and illogical
navigation through the page when using the tab key, which can make
navigation impossible for a disabled user unable to operate a
mouse.
Chris Rourke, managing director of web accessibility design firm
User Vision, said Flash websites and PDF documents are two of the
more challenging barriers to web accessibility, and described PDFs
as the "Achilles heel of accessibility".
However, Rourke said there was no excuse for not overcoming
them. Adobe 7.0, for example, includes a built-in web accessibility
testing tool.
Most observers accept that web accessibility guidelines can be
difficult to interpret. Here, the expertise of specialist design
agencies - such as Nomensa, User Vision and Reading Room - can
provide knowledge transfer to in-house IT teams or individual
developers, as well as a consultancy service to help tackle some of
the more complex problems, such as interactive areas, web-based
forms and secure areas.
Sarah Matthews, co-founder of online retailer You On Earth,
which used Nomensa to build an accessible website from scratch in
three months, recommends that anyone considering a web
accessibility project work with experts and keep things as simple
as possible.
"Do not be too clever with your design - using fancy Flash
animation can alienate all your potential customers, not just those
with a disability," Matthews said.
Unsurprisingly, the resources available to public sector
organisations and large firms, particularly in the financial
services and retail industries, have put them at the head of the
accessibility pack. However, it is by no means financially out of
reach for smaller businesses.
Steve Beasley, software developer at the Disability Rights
Commission, used accessibility design agency Reading Room to
overhaul the organisation's website in 2002. The entire project
took just two months and cost £10,000.
Beasley said the cost of supporting accessibility was only a
small percentage of the total cost, but he warned that
"retro-fitting" web accessibility could be expensive.
Likewise, Brighton-based Back 2 Balance Chiropractic Clinic
recently built an accessible website on a shoestring budget. Using
a freelance developer who used the WCAG as a resource, the small
practice now has a non-Flash website which conforms to the A grade
WAI requirements, and is accessible by patients of all ages and
abilities.
Due to the heavy use of graphics on the clinic's primary
website, the designer, Adam Bouqdib, followed the WCAG, and created
a second website based on XHTML transitional tags. Among the work
needed was adding text descriptions for every image on the main
site and assigning labels to each input box.
The guidelines state that the second website needs to be updated
as often as the main one. Bouqdib said, "To make sure it would
always have the same content I wrote a template script. This way
every page only exists once and is just displayed in two different
layouts - the main design and the accessible one."
Web accessibility appears daunting at first, but once
organisations understand the issues faced by disabled users, it
ultimately boils down to the secret of all successful websites:
good design.
www.bsi-global.com/ICT/PAS78
www.w3c.org/wai
www.rnib.org.uk/digital
www.alistapart.com
www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar
Common mistakes
Five web accessibility mistakes
- Missing or incorrect alternative text explanations for
images.
- Page headings not marked up within the HTML code.
- Poorly designed tab and return navigation through a web
page
- "Click here" links that do not contain any text or speech
output information for visually impaired users about the link's
destination
- "Self-triggering" drop-down menus that automatically redirect
users without their knowledge or consent.
Are you on the right side of the law?
There is no legislation specifically covering web accessibility,
but the Disability Discrimination Act states that disabled people
must be given the same level of access to public information and
services as able-bodied persons. Almost certainly that would
include websites.
Though no legal actions over web accessibility have yet reached
court in the UK, it is only a matter of time.
Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer at Pinsent Masons, said,
"Previous discrimination cases suggest that the sums involved would
be modest - in the region of £1,000. Although the sums of money are
not massive, past discrimination cases have led to organisations
been pilloried in the press and receiving negative publicity, which
is far more damaging than the monetary award."