W3C compliant websites are a great way to get your site where it is more accessible to people with disabilities. There are several other factors to take into consideration if you want your website available to just about every person out there.

The 2000 U.S. Census found that there are more than 50 million Americans with disabilities U.S Dep’t of Justice

Currently most Web sites and Web software have accessibility barriers that make it difficult or impossible for many people with disabilities to use the Web. As more accessible Web sites and software become available, people with disabilities are able to use and contribute to the Web more effectively. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

Following are some of the more simple things you can do to make a more accessible friendly website:

Make your site friendly for people who are blind and use a text-reader.
Place the following skip links at the very top of your websites pages - “Skip to Content” “Skip to Navigation” and “Skip to Sitemap”.

Skip Links are particularly useful for those using text readers so that when they arrive on a page they do not have to sit through the navigation menu being read to them every time they visit a new page.

Be sure to use the alt tag for images – short description of the image

Make your text so it can be resized properly for those with sight problems.
Use % or em to specify font sizes.

Make your site friendly for those that suffer from color blindness
Make sure your theme colors and text have sufficient contrast so that visitors with varying color blindness can view your content.

An alternative would be to make an alternate stylesheet or separate page available for people in this class.

Keyboard Tab key
By adding  “focus” to your link styles you make available the same feature as “hover” to people that use the keyboard tab key for navigation selection.

This next one will take a little more work.
Keyboard access for visitors who cannot use a pointing device
Specify keyboard shortcuts in documents via the accesskey attribute.

Example;

<A accesskey="C" href="index.html" title="Your home page">Home Page</A>

i totaly aggre that all these things should be incorperated into web sites. I make all my web sites so people can nav them with the tab key, you also have to consider the rest of the disabled comunity when making your site, not just the blind and the person with only one finger or didget to type with or who cannot use a mouse....

one thing i never thought of though was adding the 


“Skip to Content”

links i think ill go add them to my main menu. I use css as and layers as the layout of all my sites so it will be simple to add it as the first thing on the page but it will visualy be at the end

thanks for that

remeber the people with disablities that make them phisicaly unstable as well though so you should make your buttons big enough to mouse over without continualy skipping to the next one, if you get what i mean

I never use the long description thogh for images, just dont see the point, you can add enough to an alt tag to describe any image.

Search engine spiders are the least able or all users. No arms, no legs, no ears, no eyes, no fingers, notthing!

My theory on it is that while having an accessible website will NOT get you better or higher rankings in the engines you're at least making sure anyone with a disability can view the site without obstacles and that includes spiders and bots. My sister in law is blind and uses screenreading software, I got her to check out my last site to let me know if it was okay or not.

Here in the UK having a site which is inaccessible is illegal and it's only a matter of time before there are more court cases involving such issues.

I Totaly Agree !!!!

mobtex wrote:

Here in the UK having a site which is inaccessible is illegal and it's only a matter of time before there are more court cases involving such issues.

Really?  That's actually quite amazing.  How do they plan on enforcing such a law?  Does this apply to a personal blog?

barry wrote:

I never use the long description thogh for images, just dont see the point, you can add enough to an alt tag to describe any image.

True, but you need to be aware that the text-reader will read all of the alt. What do you do if a visitor does not need or want to hear a long description?

Example - You have a page with different graphs on it. Would you make the visitor listen to a two or three sentence (or even two or three paragraph)  description for every graph or give them the option. By giving them the option they have the same advantage that you and I do.

Outside graphs take your normal image. You and I view a page of images, we glance over them and click on the images that interest us for more information or a larger image. a long descript gives a visitor this same option.

Example - A text-reader reads the alt for for an image "Sunset over the rockies" This is a short description of the image, enough that tells the visitor the basics of the image. (A thumbnail image for you and I)

The long description (larger image for you and I) enables you to get more specific and attempt to paint a better picture for the visitor.

"As the sun sets over the rockies the sunrays streak down through the clouds like an artists brush strokes. The background is saturated with orange and blue, highlighting the magnificent purple mountains. With the combination of the background colors and the sunrays one can picture the angels of heaven protecting the world in the shadow of their graceful wings."

To really understand what is beneficial to people with disabilities read this article written by Rob Davies a webmaster who is registered blind.


Reason for edit,

SR wrote:

Really?  That's actually quite amazing.  How do they plan on enforcing such a law?  Does this apply to a personal blog?

This does not answer the question but is something to think about.
Take a look at this article

Here are some links to websites on Disabilities Acts
Austria
UK
US

Nice discussion!

Will adding audios to web sites
will be an accessible factor?

Apparently it's a good accessible
factor for humans. I mean for SEs?
Can they identify them and count?

webgaya.

Webgaya wrote:

Nice discussion!

Will adding audios to web sites
will be an accessible factor?

Apparently it's a good accessible
factor for humans. I mean for SEs?
Can they identify them and count?

webgaya.

Not sure about the SE point of view but take a look at this thread started by our host
http://forums.site-reference.com/topic/ … ssibility/