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The term “web accessibility” means simply to make more of the Internet accessible to more people. Usually the term implies greater access for people with disabilities. These impairments may include visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. Initiatives to improve web access in this way can include speaking guides that render web pages in an audio format for the blind.

However, web accessibility is not limited to any single population but is a principle of web design that makes sites and software more flexible in order to meet vastly different user needs, preferences, and situations. From a grandmother in Boise managing her grandchildren’s photos online, to the PDA belonging to a plumber in New York that gets an alert from an email program, to a paraplegic athlete in Quebec who uses special tools to access the web; the ideals of web accessibility seek to accommodate all, as if serving a single individual, website or piece of communications technology.

Why Is Web Accessibility Important?

Because the Internet has become such an important resource when it comes to education, employment, government and health care, it is essential that it be made more accessible to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. Additionally, providing greater access to the web can help people with disabilities play a greater role in and achieve more fulfillment from society.

The possibility of unprecedented access to information and interaction for all people, via the Internet, has become even more real with the advent of usability and accessibility. Web technologies are easily overtaking the accessibility barriers to print, audio, and visual media, for the benefit of us all.

One of the hidden advantages of web accessibility is that it also makes the quality of the code that programs websites better. Many of the practices that are used to make a site more accessible are the same guidelines that developers should follow as part of good coding practices and is also what a good designer does to make a site more usable.

Making the Web Accessible

While it is web developers and the software that they use that are the infrastructure that pave the way for web accessibility, it is really the responsibility of CIOS and managers to value the benefits of making their websites accessible to a greater audience. The organizational decision-making needs to favor software that helps developers produce and evaluate accessible Web sites, and be usable by people with disabilities.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops guidelines and techniques that describe accessibility solutions for web software and web developers, among other roles. The WAI guidelines are considered the international standard for web accessibility.

To learn more, read: Essential Components of Web Accessibility.

Friday, October 19th, 2007 Both comments and pings are currently closed.

By Haley January Eckels