Accessibility

Accessibility

Introduction

Accessibility is all about keeping the website coherent with accessibility rules so that people with special needs and still use the site.

In my work I have often had to tackle accessibility issues especially when dealing with websites for the Maltese Government. All Government sites have to adhere to strict accessibility issues and sometimes this is a requirement which makes the design elements of the site less appealing. It is an ongoing battle between keeping the product accessible while at the same time using the desired design features.

In Malta there is an organisation called FITA (The Foundation for Information Technology Accessibility). FITA's mission is to ensure that there are equal opportunities through ICT, provide training services and offer advice and consultancy services.


I got to know exactly how important accessibility is when I had the opportunity of meeting a blind person and actually seeing him work on his system. He used text to speech hardware that reads the text on the screen. I was amazed at how he could understand the words as the system read very fast and I could not keep up. He was also telling me how annoying it is for him that some websites do not give any thought to accessibility and rely mainly on the GUI making it impossible for him to use these sites.

Making a website Accessible

I did some research and discovered that there is a lot to read about accessibility standards. The W3 Web Accessibility Guide at http://www.w3.org/WAI/ seems like a good place to start. The W3 WAG Lists 4 major principles namely (in my own words) :

1. Perceivable - The information displayed must not be invisible to all of the senses of the viewer.
2. Operable - The interaction that a website requires must be within the capabilities of the viewer
3. Understandable - The content and the user interface must be understandable to the users.
4. Robust - The content of the site must be robust enough so that it can be interpretted by various browsers and must support the common assistive technologies.