How much do you take web accessibility into account when designing websites?

I'm afraid I don't do enough with my site...and after Target.com got sued for not making their website accessible to the visually impaired...it makes me a little nervous.

I'm no lawyer but I can tell you Target will win that lawsuit. Depending on your commercial website you will encounter people who are not always happy. You are not required to make your website able for every people with disabilities. In turn it is up to them to make a situation where they can get monitor/screen big enough for their needs. My advice is just don't worry about it, it is not up to you to do this. I would say if about 99.8% of people are able to access and navigate through your website you are fine.

Originally Posted by chronie

I'm no lawyer but I can tell you Target will win that lawsuit. Depending on your commercial website you will encounter people who are not always happy. You are not required to make your website able for every people with disabilities. In turn it is up to them to make a situation where they can get monitor/screen big enough for their needs. My advice is just don't worry about it, it is not up to you to do this. I would say if about 99.8% of people are able to access and navigate through your website you are fine.

Good points. Do you cater at all to web accessibility? And if so, how?

Accessibility is high on my priority list with every site I create. In theory if you plan your structure well and build your site using good markup you are making your site accessible to the majority of users. None of it is really rocket science...

1. use meaningful page titles
2. logical navigation system
3. structured use of heading tags
4. use pararagraphs and lists where applicable
5. provide alternative content for content images, ie alt/title attributes wher applicable
6. provide alternative content where javascript is not available
7. provide alternative content for audio/video such as a text only transcript for an audio podcast
8. correctly labelled forms and form elements
9. use css for styling and presentation
10. provide meaningfull summary and caption for tables
11. make linked items clear, ie underline linked text, use separate colours for link, visited, hover and active linked text
12. make the site navigable and understandable with images and javascript turned off

That probably takes care of most of it, you can then move into more refined areas such as...

1. provide skipinks to key page areas such as navigation and "main content"
2. provide tabindex for form elements though there's some debate as to how useful these actually are since if your html is correctly structured you could argue they're not really needed
3. provide accesskey's for key link elements, again if your html structure is good they might not be needed, plus some assitive technology uses pre determined accesskeys which can cause conflicts

Those last 3 might open a can of worms

I'd argue that it's impossible to build a *perfect* accessible site but if you make every reasonable effort to cater for as many user types as possible you shouldn't need to worry.

I have worked with a few disadvantaged web users in the past, all they want to to is to be able to navigate a site and enjoy the content using a screen reader or be able to understand audio if they're deaf - a well coded site will provide that.

It's not a crime to omit the odd image alt attribute, we're all human and we all miss things but not using them on a large scale is a crime!

Well explained there blue-dreamer.

I don't, or I never took it as that seriously.

Thank you

I only really started to delve into the accessibility issue a couple of years ago after reading a few articles on the subject. Once you understand the basic principles you find that accessibility is a very logical thing to do when constructing a site, and once you've done a few sites it becomes second nature adding the key elements.

Accessibility, and usability come to think of it, is one of those things that you keep improving on the more you do it...

Originally Posted by blue-dreamer

Accessibility is high on my priority list with every site I create. In theory if you plan your structure well and build your site using good markup you are making your site accessible to the majority of users. None of it is really rocket science...

1. use meaningful page titles
2. logical navigation system
3. structured use of heading tags
4. use pararagraphs and lists where applicable
5. provide alternative content for content images, ie alt/title attributes wher applicable
6. provide alternative content where javascript is not available
7. provide alternative content for audio/video such as a text only transcript for an audio podcast
8. correctly labelled forms and form elements
9. use css for styling and presentation
10. provide meaningfull summary and caption for tables
11. make linked items clear, ie underline linked text, use separate colours for link, visited, hover and active linked text
12. make the site navigable and understandable with images and javascript turned off

That probably takes care of most of it, you can then move into more refined areas such as...

1. provide skipinks to key page areas such as navigation and "main content"
2. provide tabindex for form elements though there's some debate as to how useful these actually are since if your html is correctly structured you could argue they're not really needed
3. provide accesskey's for key link elements, again if your html structure is good they might not be needed, plus some assitive technology uses pre determined accesskeys which can cause conflicts

Those last 3 might open a can of worms

I'd argue that it's impossible to build a *perfect* accessible site but if you make every reasonable effort to cater for as many user types as possible you shouldn't need to worry.

I have worked with a few disadvantaged web users in the past, all they want to to is to be able to navigate a site and enjoy the content using a screen reader or be able to understand audio if they're deaf - a well coded site will provide that.

It's not a crime to omit the odd image alt attribute, we're all human and we all miss things but not using them on a large scale is a crime!

Great list! I'm happy to see I do most of this already...If not all...minus the last three. Thanks!

How much do you take web accessibility into account when designing websites?

I take it very seriously since I build mainly websites for doctor's offices. Disabled people need doctor's too, so I have to be sure that they can get everything from the doctor's websites that they would need.

Since we're a small staff, there are some things we haven't implemented yet that we need to, but it takes time. Our code is clean, information is not 'hidden' in images, and where images are used, the alt attribute is present.

The Target case has been certified for a Class Action - which means, I think, that accessibility could easily become law in the US as it has in the UK. Our sites will need little, if any, adjustments should that happen.