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accessibility
What exactly is an accessible site ?
An accessible site means ensuring your site is available to those users with visual, hearing, mobility or cognitive impairments and that it is viewable over different formats such as a Lynx browser, handheld devices, over slow internet connections etc. It also means considering people using screen readers, screen magnifiers, who suffer from colour blindness or navigate through the site using only the keyboard or voice activated software. Transcripts of any audio content must also be provided for hearing impaired users.
Current Accessibility Benchmarks
The current benchmark for accessibility standards is the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 which provides a detailed list of what must be completed to achieve each level of compliance. A website can attempt compliance to one of three levels - A, AA and AAA. As levels AA and AAA are progressively more difficult to support, companies often have to make a trade-off between compliance and cost.
- Level A is widely considered the minimum for legal compliance.
- Smaller websites are best suited to A - AA.
- For corporate or public sector companies AA is usually best practice.
Useful Accessibilty Links