Web Design Accessibililty and Usability Services
Norwich, Norfolk
accessibililty and usability
Accessibility is a real buzz word in the 21st century, but what does it really mean? Accessibility is all about ensuring that everyone has access to your web pages. This 'everyone' has a broad remit - it encompasses access for disabled people, but also means people with slower modems, people without broadband and people using all sorts of different platforms and browsers to surf the Internet.
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. A website is considered the provision of a service, therefore this law applies to all website development.
Complying with this law actually has significant benefits, your site will be easier to manage, it will be compatible with emerging Internet surfing technologies and will appear higher up in the search engines. The user experience will also be enhanced as your site will be clearer and simpler for your customers to use.
Other advantages are that the overall usability of your site will be improved and people will be able to download your site faster. According to the office of National Statistics, only 25% of Internet users have broadband. This indicates that there are probably a lot of people out there who do not have the time or the patience to wait for your website to finally appear on their screen.
Finally, the good publicity that your Internet site will receive for its 'Accessible to All' status is the icing on the cake for a job well done.
Fundamentally, in this day and age, there is no excuse. Websites should be accessible to everyone and WSCreative will work with you to ensure the correct level of compliance is adhered to for you and your users.
Accessibility requires the correct mix of design and usability to be considered, thought through and followed, whilst complying with the DDA rules and regulations.
WSCreative tests their websites and other products using a number of automated tools and also with a thorough manual check. Automated testing cannot yet be relied on to provide complete verification of accessibility and so a manual audit ensures that all aspects are covered.
The websites produced by WSCreative conform to a minimum accessibility standard of AA (W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0) and in most cases conforms to the AAA standard.
For more information about what can be done to make websites accessible for users with particular disabilities, please contact us.
For more information about the DDA:
