How web accessibility can boost your business 16 May 2005
More and more countries around the world are passing laws about blind and disabled access to the Internet (including the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK). However, this shouldn't be considered as more red tape but an opportunity. The fact is, web accessibility benefits all your customers and is proven to boost business.
One application used by partially sighted Internet users is screen magnifiers. Here we look at how to optimise your website for this technology and how such a move can improve your website for all users - increasing traffic, loyalty and usability, as well as staying on the right side of the law.
To see how your current website works with a screen magnifier you can download one from Zoomtext or magnifiers.org.
Separate the page with clear and descriptive headings
Headings stand out to screen magnifiers when they move across a webpage and so users will often pause on these. The naked eye works in a similar way as people tend to scan pages rather than read from top to bottom. So, by delineating your page, users can find what they want quickly. It is therefore important to use clear and descriptive headings, as users will get frustrated having to read every section to find what they are looking for.
Similarly, if sections use borders and different background colours, users know they're moving into a different section. This helps both partially sighted users and those with better eyesight as they can scan through a web page: if the content, footer and navigation are all clearly differentiated it's easy to quickly gain an understanding of the on-page layout.
Avoid embedded, scrolling or flashing text
Due to the nature of text embedded within images it often becomes blurry. When looked at through a screen magnifier this is made worse to such a point it can become illegible. Avoiding embedded text helps well-sighted users too, as embedding text within images can greatly increase the download time of each page and mean the difference between a customer looking at your page or getting frustrated and skipping to another. To check if text is embedded simply try to highlight each letter individually - if you can the text isn't embedded within an image.
Scrolling and flashing text, while grabbing the attention, is known for offering poor usability, as it means that users can't read the text in their own time and can hamper functionality. As screen magnifier users read web pages at a slower rate, the chances are they won't have time to read all the text before it disappears.
Make sure hyperlinks are descriptive of their destination
Hyperlinks are the pieces of text that when clicked on with a mouse take you to a pre-programmed webpage. These are often simply labelled 'click here' and 'more'. However, this should be avoided and replaced with text that adequately describes the link destination. Like headings, hyperlinks stand out to screen magnifier users as well as other users. If 'click here' is deployed then users will have to search through the text to work out the context and the hyperlink's destination.
Front-load paragraph content
Front-loading paragraph content means placing the conclusion to an article first, followed by the what, why, when, where and how. In doing so all users can quickly ascertain whether they are interested in the subject and either read more or move on. There are related articles on how to make your site accessible for disabled users and test the usability of your web site in the BT Business Today archive.
