Having your site built accessibly shows that you support equality and comes with some important business benefits.
An accessible website is one which is designed to be usable for a very high percentage of web visitors who have a wide range of individual viewing needs. Primarily aimed at making the web usable for people with disabilities, accessibility makes the web more open to a vast array of people in all manner of situations which I will outline later on.
Accessible web-design is implemented in line with the World Wide Web Consortiums (W3Cs) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which is currently at version 1.0. Accessible websites can be measured by their conformance to the WCAG guidelines and are rated from `A` (Acceptable) to `AAA` (Highly accessible). I make sure that my websites reach at least the A rating and in some cases AA or AAA.
Around the world, disability discrimination laws are increasingly being unveiled that state that access to information and services (particularly governmental and commercial services) should be available to all. Court cases have already been won by people who have sued an online service because they couldn’t access a some of its information or functionality and therefore it’s a very prudent move to have your site built accessibly to help avert the possibility of future litigation.
On a more positive note, an accessible web site is much easier for a far wider audience - than is usual - to use and enjoy. This is due to the raft of good practise accessibility guidelines that state (amongst other things) that users should be able to customise their viewing experience, the site must be well structured, the communication must be clear and the site navigable without a conventional input device (ie a mouse) – accessible sites can therefore be better for…
And a wider audience means more penetration of your message and a greater potential customer base.
I offer a full range of website services in conjunction with my production partner 'Spotted Duck'.
Of course I can produce offline communication and marketing media to support your online marketing activity. See the Design & Print page for more.
Many people think that having a website produced will in itself gain them overnight success, with the phone ringing off the hook from the moment that it goes on-line - I'm afraid that its not quite that simple. Success on the web demands good planning, thorough strategy, careful design and marketing that you'll undoubtably need to spare a decent budget for. Anything less and you'll most likely be wasting your money and your time.
A well designed website communicates clearly, is easy to use and helps your visitor to do something thats personally beneficial, ie to find information, buy products or services or to protest against an issue they feel strongly about. This in turn benefits you as well, by saving you the time you used to spend giving people information, by selling your services or products remotely or by helping you amass a significant amount of petitions for your campaign.
Infact, there are a fantastic amount of features and benefits that a website can deliver, and the fun is in brainstorming what could be right for your particular strategic needs.
The general process I use for website design is...