Shopping and Marketing

The Top 20 Things You Can Do to Make Your Website Accessible

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed by
Congress. The law was designed to protect people with
disabilities from being discriminated against, because of a
physical or mental disability. The act was put into place to
help guarantee equal opportunity for people with disabilities in
any public area – and it covers regulations for employment,
transportation, state and local government services,
telecommunications, etc.

But what about your Website? Have you done all you can, to
assure that your Website is accessible?

Here is a checklist you can use, to determine if your Website is
as accessible as it could be. (Note: These actions vary from
fairly simple to complex, and this list is not meant to be
considered the only options or actions you can take to make your
site more accessible).

1. Have you provided a text equivalent for every non-text element
on your site? Non-text elements include: images, graphical
representations of text (including symbols), animations
(including animated GIFs), image map areas, programmatic objects
and applets, ASCII art, scripts, spacers, frames, images used for
list bullets, buttons, sounds (whether automatic or by user
interaction), video, audio tracks of video and stand alone audio
files.

2. Have you ensured that any information conveyed with color is
also available without it?

3. Are changes in the natural language of all pages on your
Website and any text equivalents (such as captions) clearly
identified?

4. Are all documents on your Website organized so that they can
be read without style sheets?

5. Do you update all equivalents for dynamic content every time
you update the dynamic content itself?

6. Have you eliminated any special effects from your Website that
cause the screen to flicker?

7. Are you using clear and simple language in all content placed
on your Website?

8. If you use images and image maps, are you providing redundant
text links for each active region of your server-side image map?

9. If you use images and image maps, are you providing
client-side image maps (instead of server-side) whenever
possible?

10. When using data tables, have you identified the row and
column headers?

11. If you use frames, have you titled each frame to make it
easier for users to navigate your site and identify the frames?

12. When using applets and scripts, have you made sure that the
pages are useable when all programmatic objects are not
supported, or turned off? (If that isn’t possible, have you
provided the information on an alternative accessible page?)

13. When using multimedia, have you provided an auditory
description of the most important visual information on a
multimedia presentation?

14. When using any time-based multimedia presentation (such as a
movie or animation), have you synchronized the equivalent
alternatives such as captions or auditory descriptions of the
visual track to the presentation?

15. Have you made sure that the background and foreground colors
on your Website have enough contrast so that when someone with a
color deficit looks at it (or your Website is viewed with a black
and white screen) they can still read it clearly?

16. Have you clearly identified the target of each link?

17. Have you provided a place to get information about your site,
either through the use of a site map, or table of contents?

18. Have you clearly identified the primary language of your
Website?

19. Have you provided information so that users can choose how
they want to receive documents – by content type, language,
etc.)?

20. Have you provided summaries for all the tables on your site?


Here are some simple steps you can take that don’t require much
work or technical ability:

Graphs and Charts:
When working with graphs and charts, make sure you’ve provided
enough information that any graphs or charts aren’t needed to
understand the article, but are just supplements to it. You can
also use the “alt” tag to provide information about them.

Image Maps:
Provide alternative text anywhere that the user must click on
your Website, so that if they’ve turned off the graphics, or
can’t view them, they can still understand what your site is
about and can navigate around it. (Note: This method still
doesn’t work with all browsers, but at least you’re trying!)

Tables:

When working with headers, use the “th” attribute so that users
with a visual impairment can hear the table headers from their
screen reader.

Hypertext Links:

When using hypertext links, use text that will make sense when a
screen reader reads allowed to a visually impaired user.

Bold Face

When writing your sales copy, use the “em” instead of the “b”
tag. By using the emphasis tag, a screen reader’s tone will
change, adding emphasis to what is on the screen. If you use a
bold tag, the screen reader can’t recognize the change, and all
of the copy will be read in the same tone.

Multimedia (Video, applets, and Plug-ins):

Try and provide alternatives when using multimedia. If you’re
using streaming video for example, which has sounds or dialog,
your two best options would be to either provide
closed-captioning for the video or provide a text version for the
dialogue. (This actually helps non-visually impaired viewers who
have dial up instead of DSL, or for the times when the amateur
video sound quality is poor.

When you use applets or plug-ins, look for alternative methods of
presenting information such as text links, without relying on the
applet or plug-in for navigating around your Webpages.

So, how do you know if your Website meets the accessibility
guidelines?

You can use the Bobby Program. “Bobby” is a free Java-based
program that searches through your Website to check its
accessibility. Although it can’t analyze page content, it can
analyze coding and the readability of your Website.

If you’re interested in finding out how accessible your Website
is already considered to be, you can go to:
http://webxact.watchfire.com/

WebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages
of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues.

If you’re interested in learning more about web accessibility, or
you know someone who needs information or access to resources for
a disability, you can get more information from the following
links:

http://www.gatech.edu/accessibility/
AWARE: Accessible Web Authoring Resources & Education

http://www.awarecenter.org/
Bobby Version 3.2

http://www.cast.org/bobby/
CSS2 Tutorial

http://www.dynamicdeezign.com/css/introduction.html
IBM Accessibility Center

http://www-3.ibm.com/able/
IBM: Java Accessibility

http://www-3.ibm.com/able/accessjava.html

Is YOUR Website Accessible?
http://www.janejarrow.com/tv_station/webaccess/

WAI (Website Accessibility Initiative)
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Author
George Whitecraft

http://whitecraftshoppingmarketing.biz/info/l/tbp
http://whitecraftshoppingmarketing.biz/info/l/pba

posted by George @ 7:06 PM 0 comments