Pod1 Addresses the Web Accessibility Issue
An independent web design agency based in West London, Pod1 has been providing specialist web design, web development and online marketing solutions since 2001. Core to Pod1’s ethos has been the continual drive to promote the importance of accessibility in web design to ensure all work undertaken on behalf of clients not only looks good with great functionality, but also complies with all legal requirements.
(PRWEB) July 25, 2006 -- An independent web design agency based in West London, Pod1 (http://www.pod1.com) has been providing specialist web design, web development and online marketing solutions since 2001. Core to Pod1’s ethos has been the continual drive to promote the importance of accessibility in web design to ensure that all work undertaken on behalf of clients not only looks good with great functionality, but also complies with all legal requirements.
On 1st October 1999, Section III of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which refers to accessibility of websites, came into force. This section of the act which refers to the provision of services, now for the first time also covered websites. Worryingly more than five years on and approximately 80% of all websites are still in breach of this act.
Looking at the bigger picture, the World Wide Web as we know it is only about fifteen years old and has been widely used by most people for less than half of that time. Due to its unique structure, it has proved very difficult to monitor or implement standards, so in 1994, W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) was set up to do just that and in May 1999, W3C issued a set of guidelines to deal with just this issue.
Pod1 has therefore undertaken to make sure there is total compliance with these guidelines for all their current design and build projects. These are separated into 14 checkpoints which can then be sub-divided into three priorities; where priority 1 must be satisfied, priority 2 should be satisfied and priority 3 may be satisfied, to gain any level of compliance.
What this means is that all websites can be categorised by conformance, with level A meaning all priority 1 checkpoints are satisfied, level AA meaning all priority 2 checkpoints are satisfied and level AAA meaning all priority 3 checkpoints are satisfied. Pod1 has made it protocol to make sure all sites designed and developed are at least level A with the majority being level AA.
Fadi Shuman, founding partner at Pod1 said, “Ironically if all sites were to comply with the most basic level of conformity they would not only be fulfilling their legal requirements they would also be aiding their performance with the search engines”. This is because screen readers such as IBM’s HomePage Reader work in a very similar way to the search engine spiders so any sites that have been built following the W3C guidelines are also increasing their search visibility.
Put simply good website accessibility leads to;
- Increased audience; approximately 10 - 15% of the online population is disabled.
- Improved SEO; by having a more accessible site means that by default it will be more visible to the search engine.
- Easy to maintain; accessible websites make it easy for an organisation to re-purpose and reformat content and therefore makes it quicker to evolve.
- Increased brand value; adhering to accessibility principles will reinforce an organisation's socially responsible attitude.
- Avoidance of litigation; by law, reasonable efforts to ensure a site is accessible have to be made when designing and building a website.
Website accessibility has already attracted attention internationally when in Australia in 2000, a blind man successfully sued the Sydney Olympics organising committee over the inaccessibility of their website. Closer to home the RNIB has also raised accessibility issues with two large companies regarding their websites, both companies agreed to make the necessary changes, rather than facing legal action along with a deal for anonymity, but it is surely only a matter of time before the first UK case goes to court.
For further information on Pod1 and web accessibility please go to http://www.pod1.com/web-design-company.php.
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