Web accessibility
A full version of this article is available at http://www.managers.org.uk/ (written, July 2003)
Web accessibility is the endeavour to produce web pages that anyone can peruse the content regardless of the display medium they use and any physical disability they may have.
Accessible websites are designed to consider non-standard browsers (including older versions of obsolete browsers), display mediums (e.g. mobile phones, interactive t.v., speech readers, machines without mouse or keyboards), operating systems (e.g. not just Microsoft) and browser setup (plug-ins or lack of them, screen readers, etc.). Section 21 of the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk) says that organisations must "make reasonable adjustments to make sure blind and partially sighted people can access your service". Don't be caught out!
Some of your most important readers are not people at all, but search engine robots. Search engines are a useful way to get interested people to your site. Using frames, skipping ALT attributes on your graphics and replacing text with multimedia makes their job impossible. www.w3.org has guidelines to help the creation of more accessible sites.