Accessing the web

Knowing you need to make your company web site accessible for legal and business reasons is all well and good, but how far do we need to go to satisfy these twin demands? And what’s the best way to go about it?

In this latest instalment of our new series on web accessibility, we take an in-depth look at how to put right any shortcomings in web design.

First, though, in the absence of clear-cut guidance on the matter, a web site has to decide how high to place the bar for web accessibility. There are three ‘A’ ratings, with AAA, or triple A, the toughest standard to meet. Public sector bodies, for instance, are striving to set an example of best practice and are aiming for double or triple A ratings in their web offerings. Businesses should, at least, be shooting for an A rating.

The next step in the process is evaluating your existing, or under construction, site and drawing up the snagging list. Generally, most of the common errors are relatively minor and don’t necessarily involve much work or expense. The other happy by-product of auditing a site in this way is the capture of dodgy coding that negatively affects performance. By stripping out superfluous code and stray junk characters there is an overall gain in terms of improved page download speeds. Aesthetically, too, this aerodynamic streamlining of the hard coding will result in pleasingly compact and elegant HTML.

As more and more web site owners are maintaining and managing their internet presence in-house, some of the web accessibility issues may be fixable via Content Management Systems (CMS) such as the small to micro-sized business package, Macromedia Contribute. The more serious fixes like page background colours etc. are deeply rooted in the site template and won’t be repairable via CMS for all but Administrator-level users. Depending on the amount of template work highlighted by an accessibility evaluation, in some cases it may prove simpler – and cheaper in the long run - to start from scratch and commission a developer for a new template.

Site owners will have to make the call on whether the outcome of an accessibility evaluation makes repairing the existing site template a protracted fire-fighting exercise. The alternative to consider is an external contractor to either carry out the work or devise a completely new template.

But, as previously stated, first we have to have a clear idea of where our site is going wrong with web accessibility. It’s debatable whether small to micro-sized companies need go to a specialist company for a web site accessibility audit. If a site is of the ‘online brochure’ variety rather than a high volume e-retailing site, there are many ways to check accessibility on the cheap.

It is widely believed that Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines on web content will be the marker used to assess a website's accessibility in legal action brought under the new Disability Discrimination Act. The WAI’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines should therefore be the benchmark to aim for. Their web site is a highly recommended starting point for all web site owners who are serious about doing their best to meet web accessibility concerns. The site is a rich vein of info pertaining to best practice design principles, accessibility priorities and web accessibility evaluation.

The site also lists a number of online accessibility tools and accessibility checkers, but with an important qualification: “The results from evaluation tools should not be used to determine conformance levels unless they are operated by experienced evaluators who understand the capabilities and limitations of the tools in order to achieve accurate results. Web accessibility evaluation tools can not determine the accessibility of web sites, they can only assist in doing so.”

Tools and checkers, then, are not the whole answer, as many web accessibility checks require the intervention of human judgement. Some of the automated tools and checkers can also produce misleading results, which would be difficult for the untrained eye to spot. That said; accessibility tools and checkers do have a large role to play in reducing the time and effort required to carry out evaluations. These limitations accepted, online tools and checkers still represent an inexpensive way to make substantial in-roads in fixing the great majority of accessibility difficulties experienced by disabled site visitors.

However, clicking on a link and conducting an accessibility check is the easy part: to get the maximum benefit out of these automated tools it’s vital to be able to interpret the results. Unless users have a grasp of the basic principles of web accessibility, the results produced by an evaluation can be confusing or, at worst, meaningless. The sensible course of action is to take some time out to read the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Here is a small selection of the evaluation tools listed by the WAI.

WebXACT - WebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues. Essentially this service is a cutdown version of Watchfire’s famous ‘Bobby’ accessibility evaluation software.

Web Accessibility Toolbar – An interesting variation on the accessibility checker theme, a toolbar that checks as you surf. A freeware download that installs into your browser. Requires Internet Explorer 5+ and Java enabled.

OCAWA – Easy to understand results and remedies. Can test up to ten pages at a go and highlights precisely where the problem code is lurking.

Hermish – Page and code snippet checker.

ARTGuide – Solid no-nonsense approach to accessibility testing. Understandable line by line troubleshooting with remedies for the non-techie. Also includes a simulator to let you see what disabled users have to contend with when encountering your web site. An eye-opener, for sure.