Accessibility

What is accessibility & why does it matter?

Accessibility is about making your product usable by everybody including those with disabilities (e.g. visual, cognitive and physical). Investing in accessibility has other benefits too:

• financial gains from an increased marketplace
• compliance with regulations - under the UK Disability Discrimination Act, all non-personal websites must be made accessible to all
• public relations benefits from demonstrating social responsibility
• people without disabilities also benefit including older people, people with low literacy and people not fluent in the language, people with low bandwidth connections to the internet, those with older technologies, new and infrequent web users and people using mobile devices
• websites that are accessible rank more highly with search engines, see Search Engine Optimisation

By ignoring accessibility issues, you're closing your door to a huge number of customers. Eight percent of males suffer some sort of colour blindness yet many websites and products rely solely on colour to convey meaning. Worldwide 57 million people use some sort of assistive technology, e.g. screen readers and adapted keyboards yet these are rarely considered in the design process.

When designing a product or website, it's essential to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities.