Website Accessibility Standards

1041 Words5 Pages
Introduction As we moved into the 21st Century technology became an intricate part of our lives. The digital age has allowed some people to perform many activities using the internet including going to school, shopping for groceries, applying for a job and even re-connect with friends and family. With so much of our lives being affected by the digital age, it is essential that these resources be equally accessible to those with disabilities to ensure their contribution to society. According to various resources on the web, there are millions of people around the world with disabilities that prevent them from experiencing the benefits of technology. The Disability Discrimination Act states that “websites must be made accessible to disabled people. However, in a survey of 1,000 government, business and leisure sites conducted by the Disability Rights Commission last month, only 19% of websites met the minimum standards set out by the commission” (Huber, 2004). Educating those responsible for the development of these websites can help reduce these statistics considerably. In order to promote this accessibility, the W3C organization created the Website Accessibility Intuitive that established a set of standards to guide designers to develop website’s that give all users the ability to access their content. This paper will look at what these accessibility standards are and how they can benefit not only the users that visit these sites but also the business operating them and provide some examples of how you can achieve accessibility. What are Web Accessibility Standards? Web page accessibility can simply be defined as a webpage that can be accessed by a person with a disability as by a person without a disability. However, this does not mean that a person with a disability will interact with the website in the same way. For example, a person utilizing a text
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