In its widest context accessibility is about ensuring that everyone, not just the able bodied, can access a multi-media project. Understandably, in recent years the web and digital information technologies have become the focus for accessibility issues and legislation.

There are 2 primary areas of concern ...

1. Access to the internet
2. Web site design

This article deals with web site design issues.

Accessibility is a legal requirement for all government (public sector) organisations and public limited company websites in the UK but that this has proved impossible to police and clearly the vast majority of web sites do not comply.

Accessibility for websites

Here are some of the issues designers and developers must consider ...

User friendly interfaces.

Visually impaired ...

• Configuring ALT tags for images
• Navigation text based not image based
• Flow of html document is logical
• Title tag Logical
• Method of changing text size for visually impaired end users (javascript/css)
• Voice over playback controls for video and audio (bespoke flash player?)
• Subtitles

Total web site asset data size size capped for bandwidth/download size.

Size of site will fit end-user monitors.

Cross platform compatibility.

Mobile device compatibility.

Browser plug ins ...

• end user system profiling
• providing links to required plug-ins/software

Auditory impairment, avoiding audio only navigation, assets, and interface/GUI elements

HTML & CSS Validation

Further reading

There are a wide range of authoritative resources available on the web for these issues including ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility

www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility