accessible Design
Accessibility is fundamental in the design and development of websites. According to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), " it unlawful to discriminate against disabled persons in connection with employment, the provision of goods, facilities and services or the disposal or management of premises; to make provision about the employment of disabled persons; and to establish a National Disability Council." [1]. Organisations could be held accountable, if their website, especially when used for recruiting purposes, staff intranet's and e-commerce, are not accessible. As recent disability figures for the UK suggest that there are:
- over 8.54 million people registered with one form of disability or another;
- of these over 2 million have a visual impairment;
- eight million people suffer from some form of hearing loss;
- one million people have a form of learning difficulty;
- over seven million people have literacy problems. [2]
So it is vital that organisations should be widening participation and satisfying the legal requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). Designers need to ensure that their websites can be accessed by people with different skills and experience (i.e. novice to expert users), age groups and disabilities. For example, people with visual impairment. physical disability, hearing impairment and learning difficulties.
We can help organisations and designers to build accessible interfaces.
- We are experienced at capturing user requirements and conducting evaluations with individuals with disabilities. We have a comprehensive range of assistive technologies we use for evaluations with disabled users including: touch screen, screen readers, switches, and Big keys.
- We provide an Accessibility Health Check Service using a number of evaluation tools:
- 150 point checklist to assess the site for compliance with accessibility and usability guidelines and standards (Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines).
- Screen reader testing (Hal Screen reader)
- Browser Compatibility Testing with BroswerCam
- Flash Accessibility Testing
- Bobby Validator http://webxact2.watchfire.com/
- W3C HTML validator http://validator.w3.org/ The W3C Markup Validation Service is a free service that checks Web documents in formats like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.
- W3C CSS Validation Service; a free service that checks Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in (X)HTML documents or standalone for conformance to W3C recommendations http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator
[1] DDA - A complete outline of the Disability Discrimination Act
[2] Statistics from E-Government Unit