No such thing as a fully-able user

— Published February 1st, 2004  |  by David Moore

Mark is NCBI's EU Projects Officer, managing their work on a number of European research projects. He's also head of the NCBI Centre For Inclusive Technology (CFIT), charged with raising awareness of the importance of accessible design in information and communication technologies.

In recent years, accessibility has become one of the most important issues facing website owners and web developers. Is there a simple definition of accessibility?

I prefer the term "inclusive design". It's all about making sure your product or service is available to the widest audience, including older people, people with disabilities, people relying on voice output, people in a hurry...

Why is accessibility important?

Because so many people are permanently or temporarily restricted in their ability to access and interact with the contents of a website. If you provide products or services through a website, you are crazy to be putting barriers up for your audience. It's like opening a shop and installing a door that's so small only half your customers can get through it.

Is accessibility about the specific needs and requirements of blind users, or are other groups affected?

It's about far more than just blind users, or even just disabled users. It is true that many people have impairments such as poor eyesight, dyslexia or difficulty using a mouse. These are the 'disabled' users who we tend to think of when we talk about accessibility. But it goes much further than that. All of us at some time are impaired by our environment or our situation. We may be in a hurry, have difficulty seeing the screen because of the glare from the window, or we may simply be unable to cope with too much complexity because it's a Monday morning! The fully-able user is an ideal that none of us reach 100% of the time.

It would appear that accessibility is more of an issue for public sector organizations. Is this true, or should private sector organizations be concerned about accessibility problems with their websites?

Think of the carrot more than the stick. The stick for public sector organisations is policy requirements. But all organisations should be reaching out to their audiences and bringing more of them in more of the time. Nobody should have to beat you with a stick to get you to do this. It's basic business sense.

As a website owner, could I be sued or penalised for having an inaccessible site?

Not currently in Ireland - there is no legislation strong enough. But in the UK, cases have been brought under the Disabilities Act and we should be getting one of those ourselves within a year.

As a website owner, what are the benefits of investing in accessibility? How much does it cost?

Apart from making your products or services more available to your customers, think of the future. Accessibility will become steadily more important as people begin routinely accessing content through multiple devices, particularly small mobile or in-car devices. Because of their small screens or requirement to turn text to speech, these devices will require information resources that are flexible and can be accessed and interacted with in the most appropriate way. That's one of the principles of accessibility. Allowing user control of presentation and flexible interaction.

Understand and work with those principles today and you will be ready for the future when it comes. It costs very little. Think of usability: four or five years ago online shopping processes were so bad that most of the time you couldn't get to the checkout without giving up in confusion. Now most are fine and people can buy things. How much did that cost to achieve? There's a lot to it, but it's not rocket science.

What are the first steps to making my site accessible?

The first step is to understand for yourself what is accessible about it already and what is not. A quick user test is the best approach. There is no substitute for actually seeing real representative users attempting to carry out real life tasks on your website. This will uncover most, if not all, the important accessibility issues with the site and you can then discuss these issues with accessibility experts. This will give you real insight into accessibility from the users' point of view, enabling you to see things from their perspective. It will make designing accessible sites in the future much easier and intuitive. After a user test, you will be in a better position to assess what way you want to proceed.

For basic information about web accessibility and the international WAI guidelines, delivered in a way you can understand, there is no better source than the National Disability Authority's Irish IT Accessibility Guidelines [http://accessit.nda.ie].

Related Links:

• The National Council for the Blind of Ireland - [http://www.ncbi.ie]
• National Disability Authority's Irish IT Accessibility Guidelines - [http://accessit.nda.ie]