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Accessibility tips and tricks continued ...

1. Customer focus

TIP: Know your visitors

The key to designing accessible and usable web sites is user-centred design. Consider the widest possible range of users and environments, including people who:

• Have a disability
• Are older citizens
• Find reading difficult eg someone with dyslexia
• Live/work in rural/remote communities
• Do not speak (or understand) English fluently
• Work in noisy, cramped, hands-free or high glare environments
• Use the latest technology eg WAP devices

TIP: Don't assume that everyone uses the same kinds of devices the same way

The W3C states that "the most important thing to understand in terms of making a site accessible is that people use the Web in very different ways. A site should therefore present information in a way that people can access it regardless of what kind of hardware or software they are using, and regardless of how they navigate through a site."

From a practical perspective, this means that web developers need to consider the different circumstances that users may be operating in, which may be very different from their own, for example¹:

• They may not be able to see, hear, move.
• They may have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
• They may not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse.
• They may have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection.
• They may not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written.
• They may be in a situation where their eyes, ears, or hands are busy or interfered with (eg driving to work, working in a loud environment).
• They may have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.

The user circumstances above make up a cross section of all user groups, ie people with disabilities, or people who live in remote areas are not a discrete group but a part of every customer segment.

TIP: Begin with a purpose

Determining the goal of your site and clearly conveying this is one of the first steps towards enhancing web accessibility and usability.

• Design sites that focus on the user's core tasks (rather than from a business or technical perspective)
• Interview potential users of your site before any HTML has been written and at key milestones along the way
• Make the site easy to use (function) before considering look & feel (form)

References

¹ Introduction to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999

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