Web accessibility is an integral part of any web site – without it, some people will simply not be able to access your information. Australia does not have any specific accessibility legislation, relying instead of the Disability Discrimination Act (1992), but Maquire vs SOCOG set a legal precedent that cannot be ignored.
Making your site accessible can assist more than people with disabilities – also helping the elderly, people with English as a Second Language, people using older or different technologies as well as the general public. In addition to increasing your market share by making your site available to, or easier to use by, these people, you will also:
- increase your site’s search engine ranking, therefore making your site easier to find
- reduce your bandwidth costs and reducing the time it takes for your users to download pages
- easily be able to repurpose your online material to other formats, such as PDAs, mobile phones or text-only hardware.
iFocus web accessibility services include the:
- presentation of accessibility basics seminars, and the provision of a monthly accessibility newsletter
- development of written policies and procedures on web site accessibility, including the lodgement of Disability Action Plans
- provision of technical and compliance assistance on accessibility issues, during both design and development
- auditing of sites using industry standard accessibility guidelines (W3C WCAG, IMS Guidelines etc)
- review of Content Management Systems for their compliance with the W3C Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines, including the ability to produce accessible content
- testing using a variety of assistive technologies (screen readers, magnifiers, joysticks etc) and different operating systems and browsers
- training for staff in accessibility development and content authoring
- creation of accessible multimedia such as tagged PDFs and properly coded Macromedia Flash and JavaScript
- availability of PurpleCop as a tool to be run independently on sites, providing a thorough audit and detailed summary of the accessibility issues requiring attention.