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Web design principles: accessibility to your site by users with special needs (screen 7 of 17)
Accessibility
You put a lot of time, effort and money into developing and maintaining a website and it's important that the site is as accessible to as many people as possible - including those with special needs.
Many people with special needs use the Internet as a source of information and a research tool, and access it using a voice reader, which reads the website's information to them.
When you design your website it is worth keeping the requirements of those with special needs in mind.
Documents on accessibility
Documents discussing the technical issues which impact on the accessibility of Internet information to users with a disability are produced by the 
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)(1). W3C is charged with the task of creating standards for HTML development, authoring and practice.
In addition, authors of Australian websites are required to comply with Australian legislation and responsibilities.
If you're part of a government department you will also need to look at:
- The Commonwealth Disability Strategy(5).
- Your department/agency's Disability Action Plan.
What should you do to make your website more accessible?
The Web Accessibility Initiative(6) finds solutions for Web authoring practices that cause problems for users with voice readers, audio browsers and text-only browsers. Among their recommendations:
- Use style sheets to format and lay out pages rather than tables.
- Avoid using tables and invisible images for layout purposes.
- Use ordered lists in preference to unordered lists.
- Provide alternative ways to access information provided by audio, video, applets and scripts.
- Provide 'alt' text for images and image maps.
- Provide a link to a longer description for graphics which present important information (for example, charts, diagrams).
- Provide descriptive titles for all images used as links.
- Provide a mechanism for the user to freeze any moving or blinking objects, particularly those that contain text.
- Use elements and attributes that convey structure rather than presentation
(for example, structural elements include ABBR, ACRONYM, CITE, COD, DFN, EM, HI, H2, STRONG and so forth, while presentation elements include things like size="14", B, I, TT, FONT, BASEFONT, CENTER). - Create link phrases that make sense when read out of context.
- Avoid frames, or if used, ensure that screens are readable and useable without them.
- Provide keyboard-only navigation.
Also have a look at Accessibility features of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)(7).
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References
- World Wide Web Consortium http://www.w3.org/
- United Nations Standard Rules on the Equalisation of Opportunities for Persons of Disabilities http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/dissre00.htm
- Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992http://www.austlii.edu.au/
- World Wide Web Access: Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes
(Version 3.2 August 2002)
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html - Commonwealth Disability Strategy http://www.facs.gov.au/disability/cds/index.htm
- Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI/
- Accessibility features of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS-access
If you can see this message, you are probably not seeing this site in the way it was designed. This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS2) to control the way in which elements are displayed on the page.
You will still be able to access everything in this site, but we do recommend you upgrade your browser to a more recent, standards compliant, browser.