Some Guidelines for building a more accessible web site

The following article has been written by James Saunders, Managing Director of Site-Report.com.

Introduction

As a web designer it is imperative that your web site is accessible to as many visitors as possible. To ensure this, there are a number of guidelines that should be followed. This article describes these guidelines and uses the Site-Report web site as an example of how these guidelines can be followed.

In addition to the benefits of providing web content to visitors with disabilities such as being unable to see, hear, use a keyboard or mouse, more internet users are using different types of browsers to access the internet (eg screen readers, PDAs, mobile phones). Making your web site more accessible using the guidelines below will assist all users.

1. Is the web site navigation easy to understand and consistent?

Users will soon get lost if the navigation between the pages in your web site is poorly structured or inconsistent. Try to maintain the same navigation structure throughout your web site and ensure that your users can get back to the home page.

We have followed this guideline on the Site-Report.com web site by maintaining the same navigation scheme on all pages of the site.

To simplify the management of the navigation, templates have been used so that if the navigation changes, only one file needs to be updated.

2. Do all images have ALT text and LONG DESC where applicable?

Text browsers, as their name implies, display text and not images. If you use images to convey information to your visitors, ensure that you include alt text. If an image does not convey information, for example a spacer gif, use a NULL ALT text instead, 'alt = ""'.

At Site-Report.com, there are very few images except for those in the top banner. This makes life a little simpler and has the added benefit of ensuring that page download times aren't too excessive.

3. Have you included a Skip Navigation link for text browsers?

In a text browser, the browser reads the contents of the page. Imagine having to listen to all the links in the left menu being read out each time that you open a new page in the browser! By including a 'Skip Navigation' link, you can give the visitor the choice to skip over the navigation links.

We have included a Skip Navigation link that allows the visitor to jump straight to the main content of a page. This saves them having to deal with the many navigational links!

4. If your web pages are displayed in a text browser, is the ordering of information still logical?

Tables have traditionally been used to provide structure for a web page. However, as text browsers do not display tables, they may not present the information on your web page in the most logical order. WIth the use of Cascaded Stylesheets (CSS), it is possible to separate presentation from content. This means that the content can be logically grouped such that it is meaningful if presented in a text browser.

5. Have you only used tables for the presentaton of data?

In an accessible web site, tables should only be used for the presentation of data.

At Site-Report.com, we do not use tables for a majority of our content pages. Instead, cascaded style sheets are used to define how the content of each page is presented. Go on, take a look at the code! No <table>, <tr> or <td> tags!