What is "accesibility" and why should my website be accessible?

There are believed to be approximately 8 million registered disabled people in the UK. For example, statistics show that one in twelve men (and one in two hundred women) suffer some sort of colour blindness. Website accessibility is the consideration of these users into account while designing your website, specifically by looking at the navigation, style, layout, colour and content.

The following are some simple tests you can try out yourself in order to determine how accesible your website is:

• Boot up your computer without a mouse. Can you navigate your website using just the keyboard?
• Take a screenshot, paste it into an image editor and reduce it to greyscale. Is the content of your webpage legible through half-closed eyes?
• Use your browser options to turn off image display, then empty your cache and reload your website. Is the page content still legible, and does the website still make sense?
• Use your browser options to increase and decrease the default font size. Does the text content of your website get bigger and smaller?
• Download and install Lynx browser. Can you navigate and read the content of your website fully using this text-only tool?

These simple tests relate to both motor and visual impairments, so if the answers to any of these questions is "No", then your website could benefit from some work in the area of accessibilty.

Glide Technologies Limited can design your website in an accesible fashion, making sure it is viewable by disabled users around the world (including those who are partially sighted, colour blind, or have motor impairments or cognitive difficulties).

If you require, we can also run a series of accessibility tests on your existing website (including those listed above and more) in order to evaluate how accessible your website really is. Please contact us for more information.