Often zero consideration is given to disabled or impaired users of the internet. Government Acts, such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and various other legislation requires federal agencies to be handicapped-accessable. Unfortunately, U.S businesses have been slow to catch up. Approximately 15% of the American population has some sort of disability or impairment. Aside from the moral and ethical reasons why websites should be accessible, 15% is quite a large market of people to ignore.
It is important to note that when discussing disabilities we are discussing more then
blindness, we are also addressing visually impaired users, users with tunnel vision,
far sightedness, hearing impaired and those who are physically disabled. Disabilities
cross multiple generation, sub-cultures and income levels and therefore there is a
high likelihood that disabled users have tried to access your company’s website at
some point.
Why there is a problem
Many interactive agencies ignore important and critical areas like usability, content
structure and content organization. Each of these areas are core components of
good design and development practices. Without these practices accessibility
becomes impossible to implement. Try using a screen reader (http://
www-306.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/hpr.html) to access your website and
you might be suprised how tough it is to navigate. Screen readers grab just the text
and links in a site, very much like the early pre-browser days of the internet. When
graphics, color, boldness and type-face treatments are removed content
organization and structure becomes king.
How to fix the problem
Use screen readers to navigate your website, it will greatly help in understanding
how those with disabilities navigate. It will certainly make you more sensitive to
using ALT text and text based alternative navigation. Added benefit, it will help you
in those coveted search results.
George Morris
Working in a number of capacities on projects for Fortune 500 clients, George has
gained the experience necessary to understand all aspects of a project. This enables
George to clearly communicate with clients even the most technical details of a
project. George is responsible for keeping projects on schedule and communicating
with clients from initial contact, to project development and post-launch lifecycles.
Prior to Imulus (http://www.imulus.com), George worked at Refinery, Inc. a top U.S
interactive agency
managing projects for Warner Bros., InFlow, GMAC Commercial Mortgage, and Sony
Pictures Classics.
