Do You Have Good Website Design That IsnÂ’t Accessible?

(PRWEB) May 18, 2005

A whitepaper by the UK’s Cabinet Office e-Government Unit, ‘Public Sector Web Accessibility Standards?’ by Tom Adams – a senior digital media consultant, highlights one of the key reasons why public organisations and even private companies should work hard to make their websites accessible to a wide variety of users, particularly those who’d normally find it hard to access the web. So what is it? You may have the best website since sliced bread but if it isn’t accessible, it isn’t useable and therefore you are likely to lose ‘customers’. It will be much harder to persuade them to come back for a second visit.

So it’s useful to find Nottingham-based consultancy, EIBS, setting out some guidelines for what can and cannot be done to ensure that your website is not only well designed, but accessible. The company’s presentation is entitled, ‘Guidelines for creating attractive, accessible and useable websites’ and it is produced by Matt Gemmell – the company’s customer services’ director and a local e-Government standards body consultant on website accessibility.

The presentation argues that there are a number of misconceptions about this topic area:

·AAA compliance is just not possible;

·Guidelines are always changing;

·We can’t use multimedia;

·We can’t use JavaScript or DHTML;

·We can’t use interactive applications;

·And accessible websites have to boring!

The fact is that your site can be the most fabulous and best looking website in the world, and you can use many of the above technologies while achieving a high level of website accessibility compliance. There’s no need to make too many website design compromises. Just make sure that your site is tested thoroughly, using both manual and automated testing methodologies, and by making alternatives available like [NOSCRIPT] tags; that is if you choose to use JavaScript. So there’s no longer excuse for having a well designed site that is simply inaccessible and useable.

By Graham Jarvis

Editor and Media Services Consultant

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Do You Have Good Website Design That Isn’t Accessible?