Divine Frog Web Services

Accessible Design

What Is Accessible Design?

Accessible design is designing website whilst being conscious of different people's access needs. For example, a blind or partially sighted person may use a screen reader to access your site. A screen reader is a piece of software that reads aloud the content of the web page. Designing and coding whilst considering this can make a great difference to a visitor who is using a screen reader. For example, you've probably seen lots of pages where the links are marked "click here". One of the functions that screen readers typically have is to enable the user to make a list of all the links on the page along with their descriptive text. A list of links that all say "click here" are of no use in this case. A more meaningful link text such as "download our product information pack" not only resolves this, but also makes the page more user friendly for your visitors with unimpaired vision. This is just one example, but accessible design benefits everyone; your visitors with accessibility needs aren't excluded, the page is more user friendly to everyone, and you maximise the visitors to your site.

Why Is It Important?

It is not only ethically sound to consider accessibility and implement websites in such a way that they are as accessible as possible, but it is also a legal issue. For example, in the UK the Disability Discrimination Act 1999 as it applies to websites.

New Websites

If we design a website for you it will be done with accessible design in mind.

Existing Websites

It is unfortunate that many websites have not been written taking accessible design into consideration. Is yours one of them? We offer consultancy and remediation services to address accessibility issues. Typically if the original designer didn't take accessibility into account there will be a number of issues thoughout the website. We would inform you of which pages had accessibility issues, and how much it would cost to address them.