How Does Your Web Site Look to your Customers?
What do your customers see when they look at your web site? Does your web site look like this? How does your web site sound to someone with visual problems using a screen reader? Does your web site sound like this?
Never mind, as they are already your customers, they probably put up with it or find ways around it.
What about your potential customers though? How hard do you want them to work to find out about your products and services? In the United Kingdom, about one in six people have some form of disability that potentially affects their access to web site information. The sorts of problems relevant to web site access include:
- Blindness
- Hearing Impairment
- Dyslexia
- Physical Impairment.
An investigation by The Disability Rights Commission in 2004 found that 81% of web sites failed to satisfy the most basic Web Accessibility Initiative category, and fewer than 1% were compliant at higher levels.
What About the Law?
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) has been in place for a number of years. The act applies across the whole range of services made available to the public, and specifically includes web sites. Awareness of this act is increasing, and action is starting to be taken against providers who do not make "reasonable adjustments" to allow access to those with disabilities.
What are the Benefits of an Accessible Website?
Apart from the obvious benefit of keeping within the law, an accessible web site has a number of advantages to your business:
- Search Engine Optimisation - improved rankings
- Faster Loading by Browsers - important for dial-up customers
- Ease of use - people don't stay long if they can't easily find what they need.
What Can QM Consulting Do for You?
Tell us the name of your web site. We will then analyse your selected page and provide you with a free report summarising the areas where accessibility is good, and areas where improvement is needed. We will include recommendations on how to move forward. FREE Web Page Analysis
We can also carry out an analysis of the rest of your web site, and provide a more detailed report showing all the potential problems and how they can be fixed. Armed with this information you can make an informed decision about how to move forward.
If you decide to make improvements we can help make changes, or create a new fully accessible web site (which is often the best plan in the longer term).
