A question for all business owners out there... how much thought do you give to users with accessibility issues?

If you have physical premises, then the answer is quite a bit; you're required by law to provide certain facilities, such as ramps where stairs are, elevator access to multiple floors, special bathroom facilities etc; all of which can cost considerable amounts of money.

So, how many of your customers could potentially have a disability of some sort. 1%? No. 2%? No. Try 20% - according to this report, almost 1 in 5 people in the US have some sort of disability. This is exactly why there are laws requiring business owners to give thought to accessibility issues.

On the web, then, how many of your site visitors have disabilities? Very few, I think you'd guess; one of our clients several years ago asked us why we gave attention to accessibility issues; "How many blind people buy cars?" He was surprised when I told him what we're about to tell you.

Around 30% of all traffic to KP Direction is from blind users.

Sounds a lot - but most of that traffic is from search engines. Google is the largest blind web user in the world.

What does that mean for you? Simple; if your website looks good for blind users, it will look good to Google.

Easier said than done, but KP Direction can help you by developing a new website which works well for blind users, or we can provide consultancy helping you convert an existing website to present your information better to Google.

On our side, we have a few tools we use daily in web development;

1. Mozilla

   Internet Explorer is broken - Standards are taken as just guidelines, so a site developed in IE might not display correctly in Mozilla. We develop for Mozilla, then make any necessary adjustments for IE.



2. Lynx

   Lynx is an assistive technology browser. We use the Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer tool to show us exactly how a web page is displayed to a blind user.



3. Turn images off

   Not actually an accessibility issue, but we feel that any good webpage should work just as well with images switched off as on. With so many inappropriate and un-christian images being displayed on even innocuous web pages these days, it's just the safe, easy way out. We have images turned on only for web pages we are actually working on. This helps us also to focus on the content of the page rather than the tinsel around the edges.

So, giving a bit more thought to web based disability accessibility issues now? Then contact us, and lets discuss how KP Direction can help you and your website.

Labels: Accessibility, Business, Clients