Making Web Content Accessible to Everyone

Who am I that makes this relevant?

You may be:

• interested in good web content production
• a web content or web site designer
• an adminstrator or manager responsible for a web site
• a web content developer
• a user of web content for teaching and learning

Whatever, content accessibility is about ensuring that web content is accessible to everyone who has a web access device, regardless of what device they choose to use, or what abilities or disabilities they may have. In many countries, including Australia, it is a legal requirement that web content is equally accessible to everyone, so you may be legally responsible if you do not play your part in making the web accessible.

There is a strong business case for working on web content accessibility. See a summary introduction or a more detailed description.

Why does this affect me?

Developing web content in an accessible way depends upon all involved being aware of the needs and the relevant processes that achieve accessible content. Users can suffer from lack of access, providers can demand compliance with standards, developers can follow guidelines and adopt successful techniques, organisations can avoid legal liability and social descrimination.

What should I do?

Depending upon your role, you should:

• be informed about access requirements
• demand compliance with standards
• develop resources in standards compliant way using successful techniques
• test for compliance with standards
• encourage others to comply with the standards.

How do I make content accessible?

Correctly playing your part in the process may mean responsibility to:

• make the correct demands and prescribe the correct processes
• ensure content objects are capable of graceful depreciation into equivalent objects in forms that are accessible to everyone
• provide, use, and test objects against the correct information
• use only good design and demand adoption of the correct implementation techniques
• separate content objects from the presentation information (provided as styles)
• rigourously test all resources

How do I present content accessibly?

Ensure that accessible content is:

• not rendered inaccessible in the process of being published,
  eg by a non-compliant courseware management system.

Where to next?

Read about and understand the processes involved in making web content accessible to everyone.

You may be interested in getting a copy of the proceedings of the Web Content Accessibility Conference - OZeWAI 2001 and watching a videod version of the two-days of presentations. Note particularly the one-hour summary presentation that may be of use in your organisation.