Website Accessiblity
By failing to produce an accessible website, you risk excluding and discriminating against a large number of users. Compliance with WAI guidelines ensures that users should be able to access your information and services regardless of disabilities or technical limitations.
Disabled users have every right to use the Internet and to many it is vitally important in allowing them to carry out tasks that might otherwise prove difficult or even impossible. Consider for example how much easier e-commerce has made the task of shopping to a wheelchair-bound user.
There are currently 8.5 million people with disabilities in the UK, who have a cumulative disposable income of over £50 billion. How many organisations would knowingly disregard such a considerable sector of their potential client base?
But there's more to it than that. What many website owners don't know is that they are bound by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 which covers any provider of goods or services, whether private, public or individual and whether charging for those good and services or providing them for free. Failure to provide an accessible website leaves you open to prosecution.
We design our websites to be accessible from the start and inform our clients of the Act and what needs to be done in order to create an accessible website. We are able to provide reports on existing websites where owners are unsure if they conform to the rules and regulations governing website accessibility, and if need be make the necessary alterations.
If you are unsure that your exisiting website is accessible, contact us.