Accessibility

This web site has been designed to make it easier to use if you have a visual problem. This page tells you how this has been done and is of particular interest to web designers.

For those with low vision reading the page without a screen reading programme.

1. All the text will get bigger when the increase text size option is used including the text in the navigation buttons, this is why the navigation buttons are text only.

2. Text and background colour is chosen to be visible to those who are colour blind.

For those using screen reading programmes

1. Links on the main navigation bars have a "title" attribute written into the HTML coding so that screen readers can find out more about the nature of the link.

2. Names of links in the text are chosen to be as descriptive as possible.

3. The top right hand image on every page has a  "skip navigation" link. This means that anyone using a screen reader can skip the main navigation bars and go straight to the text. 

4. Pictures have an "alt tag" describing the nature of the picture.

5. All pages use the "strong" or "em" tags for important text, so that screen readers can pick this up. 

6. Headings are formatted in a logical way using the H1, H2 etc tags.

7. Table headings in data tables are associated with their data cells using the "scope" attribute.

8. Boxes for entering data in forms are labelled with the "label" tag. The label is joined to the box with the  "for" and "id" attributes.

Despite all this, I'm aware this site is not perfect as far as accessibility is concerned, for example it uses "layout tables". However, it seems to work with the screen reader "Jaws", and all pages have been tested with the Wave 3.5 accessibility assessment tool.

I believe all web designers should consider accessibility in their planning.

Useful resources for web site designers

WebAim

I found this the best site with a good overview of the problems of web design "with accessibility in mind". Lots of tools you can use to evaluate your site. Read this before you start building your site and save lots of time later. There are tutorials for building accessible sites using Frontpage and Dreamweaver.

www.webaim.org

The Wave 

A tool for assessing the accessibility of your site, I found this easy to use and understand.

www.wave.webaim.org/wave35/index.jsp

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The World Wide Web Consortium's official document of accessibility, a bit dry, but a useful reference.

www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT

Useit.com

Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen's site on usability. He takes usability to an extreme in the design of this site, which is nevertheless quite useful.

www.useit.com

Vischeck

A tool to see how your web page looks to someone who is colour blind.

www.vischeck.com/vischeck

VIP visual impairment simulator

Beta version of a programme to simulate the effects of colour blindness and macular degeneration when testing your site, I couldn't get it to work on my computer, but maybe you'll be more lucky.

cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/software/vis

Download some trial screen readers

www.rene4u.com/scr-e.htm