Why Worry About Accessibility?

You may wonder why you should worry about the accessibility of your site if you have good traffic, high rates of conversion and have received good feedback about your website from users. However, there are some very sound business reasons why you should plan to build accessibility into your website.

Table of contents: It Is The Law; Increase Your Potential Customer Base; Accessibility Is About Other Technologies Too; Catering For ALL Users Boosts Your Brand; It Could Save You Money In The Long-Term; Accessibility Helps Usability; Win Free Search Engine Traffic; Conclusion

It Is The Law

First and foremost you should worry about the accessibility of your website because it is the law. Section III of the Disability Discrimination Act specifically mentions websites. The Code of Practice built into the Disability Discrimination Act (in force since 2002) says it is illegal for businesses to offer lower standards of goods and services to disabled people. This means you must take all reasonable steps to make your websites accessible (section 2.17). You must make certain not to treat disabled persons less favourably without justifiable reason. This could mean in the case of websites creating separate multimedia and static pages and then not updating the static pages regularly. You can justify serving a transcript of multimedia files to a blind user if the multimedia files are important to the site but you must make sure those transcripts are as useful and current as possible. You must be certain you have done everything you can to make your site usable. Validating your code is neither expensive nor difficult, neither is using alt text correctly and checking screen readers can understand tables and forms.

Recent statistics suggest 80 per cent of websites fail basic accessibility checks. Even with such a low level of compliance no webmaster have so far escaped prosecution but the warning signs are there. The RNIB approached a couple of large companies who agreed to make necessary adjustments to improve the accessibility of their websites. The potential exists for a lawsuit should a customer feel he or she has received unfair treatment. The most well known precedent for this is an Australian case in which a blind user sued the 2000 Sydney Olympics Committee because he could not access timetables on the official Sydney Olympics website.

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Increase Your Potential Customer Base

The Shaw Trust estimates almost one in five Britons of working age has a disability. This amounts to around 6.9 million people in the UK alone. DisabledGo reports two million people have low vision or blindness and nine million people have impaired hearing. The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities estimates that over two million people have differing degrees of cognitive disabilities. DisabledGo reports people with disabilities spend £45 billion each year. Businesses lose all of this potential profit by not making their websites accessible.

For many people with disabilities - particularly those with vision impairments or mobility problems - making purchases online saves a great deal of trouble. Buying online means a user can avoid travelling, navigating shops and finding help once inside. The internet has the potential to increase disabled people's self-sufficiency and for many is a far more convenient way to shop, especially where goods and services are described well. If you have an accessible website you will be one step ahead of your competitors in a lucrative market. You can also expect any new disabled customers to tell their friends about you.

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Accessibility Is About Other Technologies Too

When we talk about accessibility we mean accessibility to people but also to different devices. Your site needs not only to make sense and work for someone with a disability but also work for people using older technology, slow computers, smaller screens and those surfing the internet using Bluetooth devices such as a PDA or a mobile phone. People who use these gadgets to access webpages are likely to be more internet savvy and have more disposable income to spend on gadgets, toys and other consumer items. If you use valid HTML or XHTML on your site and your site linearises correctly then people using non-traditional devices will access your site more easily.

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Catering For ALL Users Boosts Your Brand

By making certain you do not inadvertently discriminate against people with disabilities customers will see you operating a friendly, ethical business. When people can access your site they are more likely to recommend you to their friends and family who will then consider your site trustworthy and may bring their business to you as well. With so few accessible websites, if you operate an accessible website you will get an edge over your competitors in winning the business of disabled users. The goodwill you accrue within the disabled community will then benefit you in the long-term even when your competitors finally jump on the accessibility bandwagon.

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It Could Save You Money In The Long-Term

Making a site accessible particularly if you have to make changes to a current site will cost you money. But the basic adjustments to reach a minimum level of accessibility will not break the bank. Once you have made your site accessible you should find your customer base will enlarge and hopefully your profits as well.

You will find it easier to update, maintain and redesign a site designed to WCAG guidelines which uses CSS. It takes a lot less effort to merely change text or add text than it does to have to set up a newly designed page. Alternatively when you have separated structure from presentation you can quite easily redesign the stylesheets for the entire site without having the problem of plugging the content in page by page. You will merely need to switch from one stylesheet to another. It saves time in development and will reduce your costs in the long run especially if you are paying an outside consultant for their design services. A site using external CSS will also use less bandwidth so it will save you money in running costs particularly if you have a very high traffic site.

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Accessibility Helps Usability

Many aspects of accessible design are also part of usable design and will benefit all of your customers not just those with disabilities. For example, writing simply and clearly will help everyone who accesses your site read and understand your content quickly. This will encourage them to return. If your site has a standard design and navigation all users will find it easier to move around and locate the information they need. It also means users with smaller monitors and those using older operating systems, slower computers or dialup connections will find accessing your site a lot easier. This means they are also more likely to return.

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Win Free Search Engine Traffic

Making your site accessible helps the search engines understand and index your site more quickly and more easily. This means better exposure in the organic search results which can not only drastically increase your traffic but also provide you with free branding.

Conclusion

Even if accessibility were not a legal requirement it still makes good business sense. Not only do you show your community spirit by helping people with disabilities but making your site accessible will increase your potential customer base and profits. It will also help your current users and can save you time and effort in the long-term.

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