Accessibility

Accessible web site design Scotland

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At WebMedia we regard accessibility and useability as two sides of the same coin. Web site access is all about how easy and practical it is for your visitors, and particularly those with a disability, to use the Internet and your web site in particular.

It is important for legal reasons and has both financial and moral considerations.

Just more legislation, more red tape?

Web Accessibility is too often simply seen in terms of the need to comply with new and increasing disability rights legislation. With introduction of the 'Disability Discrimination Act 1995' (DDA) and the ratification of Part III in October 2004 it is an area of growing importance and concern for businesses and organisations, large and small.

This is not only a UK requirement with the 'Americans With Disabilities Act' (ADA) the corresponding legislation in the US. It is where much of the literature and guidance on website accessibility and accepted standards has been worked on. Just more red tape — it needn't be!

Cost or Benefit?

Every activity carried out in your business has a cost and achieving a 'reasonable' level of accessibility is no different!

However ...

There are 8.5+ million disabled people in the United Kingdom with a collective and considerable spending power.

Providing information in such a way that all your customers can reasonably access makes good business sense. Businesses already spend around £20 billion each year on communicating with existing, new and potential customers. Can businesses really afford to overlook such a large potential customer group.

What's in it for me?

Whatever adjustments you need to make to improve accessibility for visitors with a disability can increase the overall useability and also benefit other customers and visitors. The knock-on effect will be to increase visitor satisfaction, build the goodwill of disability groups, disabled people and their family and friends.

... and avoid the risk of legal action against you.

Committed to accessibility

WebMedia is committed to providing as easy access as possible for all its visitors. This web site has been built with accessibility as the watchword, to W3C and WCAG 1.00 standards. Every effort has been made to ensure that it is easy to navigate with and without the use of a mouse or pointing device (see Access Guide for a list of keyboard controls) and can be easily read in text mode.