Accessibility

Web accessibility is about making your website accessible to all Internet users regardless of what browsing technology they’re using. Often accessibility is used in the context of blind users, but it is much more. It includes other vision-impaired users such as color blindless or the elderly, those using older browsers, users on mobiles phones or PDA’s, or simply someone on a slow internet conenction.

An accessible web site will:

• Provide meaningful information in the title, h1/h2 and image alt tags
• Have the most useful information near the top
• Have pages that load fast
• Have meaningful link text
• Gives user control over pages, e.g. resizing text
• Include a text-based sitemap

Factors that make a page less accessible are:

• Text presented as graphics
• No alternative to JavaScript, particualry for navigation
• No alternative to Flash content

A page designed to be accessible will also be highly usable and include many of the factors for SEO.