Website Accessibility
As website buzzwords go,
'accessibility' is about as current as it gets. It's a subject that
every company needs to think about, and yet something about which
few people seem to have a clear idea. Fortunately, we can help.
What is it all about?
In 1995 the Disability
Discrimination Act was passed, and since then the new laws it
contains have gradually been implemented. The repercussions of this
Act on your website are important, and should be taken
seriously.
When does the law come in to effect?
The section of the act relating to websites came into force on
1st October 1999.
As of that date, any website provider who is in contravention of
the
DDA
is open
to legal action. A number of companies have already been threatened
with legal action, and as a result have altered and upgraded their
sites.
Why 'Accessible'?
The purpose of the act is simply to ensure that your website can
be accessed by people with disabilities just as easily as by
everyone else. In many ways it is in your own interest to have an
accessible website - after all, the more people that can use your
site the better!
What happens next?
Creating a DDA compliant
site is actually relatively straight-forward once a few
ground-rules have been set. At Auros we make a priority that all
new sites should be as accessible as possible.
Accessibility within Immediacy
Immediacy makes it easy to create accessible, content-managed
sites. In short, anything that can be built in HTML can be put into
Immediacy. Intelligent use of efficient HTML combined with the
latest CSS layout
techniques allows us to build content managed sites that are as
good to use as they are to look at.