Accessibility and DDA online compliance

One of the websites I look after is in the public sector. Now, I wasn’t aware of the DDA online compliance law (in the UK anyway) that states that ALL public body websites should meet level A of the guidelines and level AA on as many pages as possible. So, guess who’s been busy altering hundreds of pages this week? Luckilly the sifferent sections of the site were based on Deramweaver Templates, so I really had 20 odd templates to change, no quick task though!

The Web Accessibility Initiative

Every decent web designer/developer should have heard of the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) by now. It states best practices that should be followed to make your website as accessible to everyone as possible.

Web accessibility primarily relies on good common sense as an initial building block. There are 3 levels of accessibility awarded by the WAI which are A, AA and AAA. Where AAA is the hardest to achieve.

So what advice have I got after this experience. Well, in my case the W3C online validator became my best friend…..well sort of. I used it that much that I nearly broke it :). No seriously, I really wanted as many pages to validate as possible. I chose the XHTML transitional doc type and overall I am pleased with my results.

Tips to improve accessibility

1. Make sure all image tags have ALT tages associated with them and give them a semantic meaning. If the image tag does not require any further meaning, enter a blank ALT tag.
2. Logically structure your pages so that screen readers can make sense of your content. Adding style elements to table based designs does not help in this instance!
3. Try and use heading tags that depreciate throughout the page in a logical manor. A screen reader will then know that H1 is to be read out first, then the information contained within the p tag, then the H2 tag and so on.
4. Don’t overuse colour. Try to make your pages as contrasting as possible and give all A tags identifiers.
5. Avoid using pixel-defined fonts; instead rely on relative font sizing using ems to define font sizes. Avoid fonts that are uncommon in older computers.
6. Primary navigation should be all text-based and platform independant. All links should also contain the TITLE attribute and should have tab orders and access keys enabled for those without a mouse.

If there is anything i’ve missed out, or any more info on the subject you’d like to contribute, please leave a comment!

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