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Accessibility - a simple guide
If you are designing for the web you need to be aware of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). This states that web sites be accessible to persons of visual and physical impairment. The following information and links should help
Discrimination in relations to goods, facilities and access to services, is basically the whole point here. If someone cannot access a website properly using a screen reader they have grounds for legal action. There are precedents here, the RNIB are cracking down on this, and several people in the US have sued for discrimination, against, among others, Target, Priceline.com and more.
So how to tread carefully. Contrary to popular thought, it is not all about colour contrast. It is more about code, metadata, semantic web techniques, link language and common sense.
So first off, the I.A.. Any accessibility no-no’s can be spotted right there in the I.A. Links that have the same name but go to different pages, links that reference colour, poorly thought out user journey, all of these can be fixed.
The design needs to take into account the legibility of text on a web page, specifically colour contrast. This is mostly for people who are colourblind. The W3C uses an algorithm to determine whether the contrast of text is sufficient, giving the following requirements to meet AA compliancy:
‘The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1’
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