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One of the services provided by e-bility is web site evaluations by a panel of people with disabilities. Listed below are some of the suggestions made by our team, that will help improve the accessibility and usability of a site.
Screen reader users rely on good markup to determine the document's structure and meaning, for example they can extract a Table of Contents based on the headings or a list of all the links on the page. This allows people who are blind to quickly decide whether the information is relevant to their needs in the same way a sighted user may scan a page to see if it is of interest.
Style sheets have advantages for both users and developers. For users, the page loads more quickly, and they can over ride the designer's settings with their own personal style sheet. For developer's the site is easier to maintain, consistency is automatically applied across the site, and design changes need only be implemented once.
People with reading and learning difficulties can have difficulty understanding sites that include a lot of text. They prefer to listen to content and find symbols/pictures (that convey information) helpful.
Picture literacy can also be beneficial for people with learning difficulties. Examples include video, pre-recoded audio and symbol communication used for basic navigation (such as forward/back arrows or a pictorial site map).
When providing non-text options, it is of course important that equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content is provided for people who cannot look at or hear the web page.
Do not automatically create a text only version. One of the myths of accessibility is that a site has to be text to be accessible! The web is unique in its ability to present the same information in alternative formats. This means that provided a site follows accessibility guidelines there is no need to maintain duplicate versions, such as text only pages, the same information can be viewed in large print, braille, speech, and graphics depending on the user's needs and preferences. Most people prefer to go to the main web site and their experience is that text only versions are rarely kept up to date.
Once visitors are familiar with your web site they will quickly learn where to look for navigation links, search buttons etc.
The W3C guidelines offer lots of practical information and tips about forms markup. Forms are often part of a larger application and an error on the user's part can have unfortunate consequences (eg online banking). Two of the most important things are to put any instructions to an input field before the field (not after it) and to use label markup correctly.
Used well, links are one of the things that make the Web so useful and interesting. They allow people to drill down to more information on a particular topic and jump from one part of a site to another. They are also the primary way in which people navigate around your site. If a link is inaccessible, confusing or hard to find the consequences are far reaching.
Link do's:
Link don'ts:
Google links
End of Google links
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