10 Key points for Web Accessibility
Does your website fulfil the requirements in place for disabled people?
Did you know that there is a Disability Discrimination Act (“DDA”) that says that your website must be accessible to persons with disabilities?
In order to help you satisfy the requirements of the DDA, we have designed ten basic tests for you to utilize on your own website.
1. Informational images
Informational images must also be explained in textual terms when someone hovers their cursor over the image. For example, if your organization’s logo is not textual, a yellow box should appear when the cursor hovers over it so that people who have browsers that do not support images can understand what information the logo in indicating.
2. Alt text and images
Alternative text is an attribute that you can set on images. Typically when you hover over an image on a webpage the alternative text will be displayed. For users with sight impairment, the alternative text is required in order to add context to the webpage.
Partially sighted readers need to be given equivalent information about the images as fully sighted readers. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) includes old text coding is one of its highest priorities.
Their rules indicate the following:
1 The alternative text should be a description of any figures diagrams and photographs. The text should be ideally less than 20 words and summarise the meaning of what is being displayed.
2 Where images have no value, empty quotation is all an asterisk should be displayed. Examples of such images include dots, lines, dashed lines.
3. Video and sounds
To see what it would be like for a deaf or hearing impaired person to view a web site with an audio presentation, simply click to any web site and turn off the sound. Obviously while you can see the visual aspect of the site, you have no idea what is being said. It is therefore important that your web site provides the ability to follow any audio through written transcripts. This will enable deaf and hearing impaired viewers to understand your message and is one of the WAI's priority 1 recommendations.
4. Forms access
Test your web site to confirm that the forms to be completed are easily accessed. As an example, if a viewer clicks on the "contact us" area of the web site, it should forward them to a direct e mail or e mail form to complete to send you a message. Likewise, if a viewer clicks the "comment" area of the web site it should open a box in which they can enter comments.
5. Resizing text
Check to see if you can change the font size Using Internet Explorer (which over 90% of internet users use) go to View>Font size>Largest. The text on your website should become bigger. If it does not, you web site is probably not compliant.
6. Check the site in the Lynx Browser
The Lynx browser is a textbased browser. It does not show all of the graphics that you would normally expect to see when using Internet Explorer, Firefox or equivalent browsers. By browsing your site with links you will be able to check that the site is navigable and that all pages are reachable. If they are, it will meet the demands of the web accessibility guidelines.
7. Browse without a mouse
Can you access everything on your website without a mouse? You should be able to navigate through your web site using only the tab, shift-tab and return keys. If it can, then it can be accessed by people using just a keyboard or by voice-only visitors.
8. Find out if there is a site map.
Are you able to find it without too much trouble? If you can't, visitors to your site won't be able to find it either.
9. Automated checks
Use an automated program to check your web pages. To free programs Bobby and Wave will perform such checks. They can't tell you everything, there are still things you need a human to do, but they can direct you to areas where things are going wrong or need improvement.
10. Use a specialist
Learn about this yourself or hire someone who already knows. You can read the guidelins on the W3C website, an internet governing body. If you are lacking time to do this, you can hire someone to help you.
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