After just one week from having our site redesigned an optimised, we landed a brand new contract worth over £10,000!
Website Accessibility
In 2004, a change to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) made it a legal requirement for any small business trading online to make "reasonable adjustments" to provide access for disabled visitors.
With 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK (that's approximately 14% of the population (Source Disabled Rights Commission)) it's becoming increasingly important for businesses to make their website accessible.
What is Accessibility?
At first glance, the term website "accessibility" implies making a site accessible for "disabled users". However, the more common understanding of the term is as follow:
"To allow users to access content regardless of physical, or technological ability"
As you will see, in inclusion of the term "technological ability" opens up a whole new user base including:
- Users of internet enabled mobiles and PDA's
- Users with old PC's, or slow internet connections.
- "Silver Surfers" - an affectionate term for an older generation of PC users.
What are the benefits of an accessible website?
An accessible website not only benefits your end users, but will also benefit you as a site owner.
Here are just a few examples:
- Increases Speed / Reduces demands on system resources - making a website accessible often involves "tiding" up the underlying code, which as a result, makes pages quicker to load, and uses less system resources.
- Improved Usability - encourages more visitors and sales, enhances brand image, etc
- Improved Search Engine Optimisation - by making your website accessible, you help search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to crawl and index your content more easily, and as a result, can often increase your page rank compared to your competitors.
Want to know more?
If you would like to know more about how we can help you get the most from your website, please feel free to contact us for a friendly, no pressure / no obligation chat.
