Your Website May Be Invisible to Millions
The American Foundation for the Blind estimates 10 million Americans are blind or visually impaired. Other research indicates at least 11 million are deaf or hearing impaired.
Nearly everyone faces vision and hearing difficulties later in life. In America, as with most developed countries, our population is aging and thus our vision- and hearing-impaired population is growing. So if you operate a website, you can be assured that your website has been visited by someone who has trouble seeing or hearing.
Sadly, many websites don't bother to consider the millions of users with disabilities. There are innumerable examples, and below is just one, taken from the BlackBerry website. This text has been enlarged to illustrate how very tiny the original text was. The gray text in particular was so small that lowercase letters were only 5 pixels high! Plenty of young eyes can see this well (though strain kicks in for them too after awhile). Older eyes or people with visual impairments simply can't read text this small. And of course, this page offered no way to enlarge the type.
Some countries legally mandate accessible design for websites. In fact, the US government requires all federal sites and those who receive federal funding to meet minimum standards of accessibility. This could some day be extended to all commercial websites. For now, it's a good idea for all site owners to ensure that their sites meet the minimum Section 508 guideliness (of the federal Rehabilitation Act).
You may ask how you can possibly build a website that can be viewed by blind users. Special software is used by blind or vision impaired users that reads aloud on-screen text. However, these "screen readers" only work if there is text to read and many websites use images to display headlines, logos or other text. These blocks of text are not actual digital letters but rather images of letters. Therefore, screen readers can't interpret them unless the web developer inputs hidden code to describe the image.
It should be pointed out that accessibility does not equal usability. It's perfectly possible to create a site that meets the basic level of Section 508 standards but is not easy to navigate or use. This is why it's so critical for organizations to consult with a professional designer who has a sound grasp of typography, composition, layout and information architecture, etc.
Our firm works hard to ensure every site we build meets the minimum level of accessibility standards. Most of our clients are nonprofit agencies and often many of the clients they serve have disabilities. However, businesses serve individuals with disabilities too and we can't think of a reason why commercial clients would want to build their site off-limits to a large percentage of the population. To us, it just makes sense to build accessibility into every website we create.
So what makes a site accessible? Without getting technical, there are really two basic principles needed to make a site accessible to users with disabilities. First, make sure images have "alt text," the hidden text that describes an image for users with visual impairments. Second, provide a plain text description of any content that is inherently visual or audible in nature. For a video, provide a transcript of any dialogue (for deaf users). For interactive modules, describe the actions and functions of the modules.
One other easy thing you can do is make sure the text on your website is easy to re-size. Some web browser software allow you to lock the text size. Other browsers allow the user to override locked text, but often the designer has coded the site in such a way that text disappears as the font sizes are increased! This may sound unusual but it's actually a common problem.
It's actually pretty easy to make your site accessible. Which is what's so frustrating about the state of the web: since building accessible sites is not terribly difficult, it's a shame more sites don't do it.
Nearly everyone faces vision and hearing difficulties later in life. In America, as with most developed countries, our population is aging and thus our vision- and hearing-impaired population is growing. So if you operate a website, you can be assured that your website has been visited by someone who has trouble seeing or hearing.
Sadly, many websites don't bother to consider the millions of users with disabilities. There are innumerable examples, and below is just one, taken from the BlackBerry website. This text has been enlarged to illustrate how very tiny the original text was. The gray text in particular was so small that lowercase letters were only 5 pixels high! Plenty of young eyes can see this well (though strain kicks in for them too after awhile). Older eyes or people with visual impairments simply can't read text this small. And of course, this page offered no way to enlarge the type.
Some countries legally mandate accessible design for websites. In fact, the US government requires all federal sites and those who receive federal funding to meet minimum standards of accessibility. This could some day be extended to all commercial websites. For now, it's a good idea for all site owners to ensure that their sites meet the minimum Section 508 guideliness (of the federal Rehabilitation Act).
You may ask how you can possibly build a website that can be viewed by blind users. Special software is used by blind or vision impaired users that reads aloud on-screen text. However, these "screen readers" only work if there is text to read and many websites use images to display headlines, logos or other text. These blocks of text are not actual digital letters but rather images of letters. Therefore, screen readers can't interpret them unless the web developer inputs hidden code to describe the image.
It should be pointed out that accessibility does not equal usability. It's perfectly possible to create a site that meets the basic level of Section 508 standards but is not easy to navigate or use. This is why it's so critical for organizations to consult with a professional designer who has a sound grasp of typography, composition, layout and information architecture, etc.
Our firm works hard to ensure every site we build meets the minimum level of accessibility standards. Most of our clients are nonprofit agencies and often many of the clients they serve have disabilities. However, businesses serve individuals with disabilities too and we can't think of a reason why commercial clients would want to build their site off-limits to a large percentage of the population. To us, it just makes sense to build accessibility into every website we create.
So what makes a site accessible? Without getting technical, there are really two basic principles needed to make a site accessible to users with disabilities. First, make sure images have "alt text," the hidden text that describes an image for users with visual impairments. Second, provide a plain text description of any content that is inherently visual or audible in nature. For a video, provide a transcript of any dialogue (for deaf users). For interactive modules, describe the actions and functions of the modules.
One other easy thing you can do is make sure the text on your website is easy to re-size. Some web browser software allow you to lock the text size. Other browsers allow the user to override locked text, but often the designer has coded the site in such a way that text disappears as the font sizes are increased! This may sound unusual but it's actually a common problem.
It's actually pretty easy to make your site accessible. Which is what's so frustrating about the state of the web: since building accessible sites is not terribly difficult, it's a shame more sites don't do it.
posted by David Board at
11:16 PM
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