Additional accessibility features

Accessibility features can greatly enhance a site. Although they may not be referred to in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines they are still very useful

Conducting Operating System and Browser testing

Although not technically an accessibility issue, ensuring that your site works on a variety of operating systems and browsers will improve the accessibility of your site.

Creating accessible forms

Increasingly, the web is becoming more interactive. People can buy things online, from movie tickets to clothes and even fridges. As the web takes over from traditional services such as retail it is important that this new web functionality is accessible. Increasingly, forms are the method through which many of these services are being provided to the general public. Accessibility of these services becomes essential in the provision of Government services.

Creating sites accessible to people with cognitive disabilities

People with cognitive, language and learning disabilities comprise the largest group of those with disabilities accessing the web. Unfortunately the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Version 1.0 does not include many checkpoints aimed at assisting this sub-group. The second version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines also does not fully address the needs of this sub-group.

Creating valid CSS

When designing a web site it is important to identify presentation as separate to content and structure. Separating content from presentation and structure offers a number of advantages, including improved accessibility and manageability.

Creating valid HTML pages

Web sites are written in specific languages, and just like human languages, they have their own grammar, vocabulary and syntax. Every web page written in these computer languages are supposed to follow these rules. However just like texts in a human language can include spelling or grammatical errors, web pages using computer languages can also include these types of mistakes. The process of verifying whether a web page actually follows the rules for the language(s) it uses is called validation, and the tool used for that is a validator. A web page that passes this process with success is called valid or that it complies with its DOCTYPE definition.

Ensuring sufficient colour contrast

Colour contrast is important for people who have vision impairments, including people who are colour blind. One in five men has some form of colour blindness, so this is a common problem.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a client-side scripting language used by many different web sites. JavaScript can be used to create fly-out menus, mouseovers and form validation. However JavaScript has many accessibility problems; and a text equivalent is always required.

Making a PDF accessible

PDFs cannot be made fully accessible, but they can be made accessible to some people with disabilities; for example people using screen readers. A PDF is made accessible by tagging certain elements within it, for example images. If a PDF is tagged properly then a person using a screen reader can often understand a PDF just as well as an HTML document. However PDF does not yet have all the features of HTML, and therefore an equivalent must always be provided.

Making images, image maps, maps and graphs accessible

Images, image maps, maps and graphs can sometimes be difficult or even impossible to describe in text. Checkpoint 1.1 requires that for all non-text elements that a text equivalent is provided. This means that either a text explanation of the information is given near the non-text element, or that the description is coded with the information, such as in an ALT attribute of an image.

Making splash pages accessible

If you use plugins (such as Flash) or scripts (such as JavaScript) on your pages you could be preventing users from entering or using your site properly. There will be people who will have difficulty accessing the navigation or progressing past a Flash front page (splash page) for a number of reasons.

Making tables accessible

Tables can cause a number of accessibility problems if they are not built using the accessibility features within HTML. In web sites there are two ways to use tables: for layout or for data presentation. Style sheets should always be used in preference to layout tables.

Page source order

Page source order is important to people who have vision impairments and rely on a screen reader to navigate or interpret the site. It is also important to people with cognitive disabilities who use a screen reader to assist in reading the information on the site. A document where source order does not match the order of content with CSS on can be very confusing to these groups of users. In addition, source order is important to people with physical impairments who rely on a keyboard to navigate the site. People who rely on keyboards tab through the content and therefore can find it difficult to navigate the page if the source order does not match the order of the page with CSS on.

Page structure

Page structure is important to people with vision impairments, such as those using a screen reader or a magnifier. Page structure is also important to people with cognitive disabilities and can assist those with physical disabilities.

PDFs and accessibility

Portable Document Format (PDFs), video files and other downloads are inaccessible according to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0, because they require a plugin to the browser in order to access the information. There are methods that can make the actual PDF or video file available to certain people with disabilities (for example, creating tagged PDFs and adding audio descriptions to video files), however even if these documents are created in an accessible way the information still will not conform to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Top Issues - Accessibility Toolkit

When attempting accessibility conformance you may find it difficult to follow some accessibility guidelines. This section covers what to do in these situations.