Benefits of Accessible Website Design

Using the web standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) can give your site many advantages over your competitors and help ensure it will reach as many people as possible! It will:

Improve your search engine ranking.
Improve web page download speed.
Simplify site maintenance.
Future proof your site, make your web site compatible with new technologies, across browsers and browser versions.
Open up your web pages to people with disabilities.
Enhance your public image.

Improve Your Search Engine Ranking:

Designing with web accessibility and standards improves search engine ranking as content and presentation are separated. By taking out all presentation information and putting it into a separate file your content is 'unlocked' and the search engines can find it more easily and quickly.

Accessibility isn't just about getting it right for disabled users: the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines also enable web-access by the search engines, phone and PDA. It has been estimated that there are 743 million people accessing the net through these devices!

"By exposing this content you can significantly increase the chance that people searching for particular content on your site can find it. From a strategic point of view, anything you can do to increase the likelihood that your site will be found is a positive benefit." Shawn Lawton Henry, WAI.

Improve Web Page Download Speed:

The smaller the file size of your page the faster it will load.

Here are six reasons why pages that use CSS for layout download faster than tabular pages.

Browsers read through tables twice before downloading them, once to work out its structure and once to determine its content.
Tables appear on the screen all in one go - no part of the table will appear until the entire table is downloaded and rendered.
Tables encourage the use of spacer images to aid with positioning.
CSS generally requires less code than tables.
All code to do with the layout can be placed in an external CSS document, which will be called up just once and then cached on the user's computer; table layout, stored in each HTML document, must be loaded up each time a new page downloads.
With CSS you can control the order items download on to the screen - make the content appear before slow-loading images and your site users will definitely appreciate it.

Simplify Site Maintenance:

The same instructions in your style sheet(s) can be applied to several or all pages. Changes only have to be made in one document, the style sheet, instead of every page of the website.

Future Proof Your Site:

Using web standards, ensures that the site content will be readable in the future when new devices, browsers and software are introduced. Microsoft has launched the latest version of IE. How will your site look in this browser?

Open Up Your Site to People with Disabilities:

At least 10% of the population in most countries have disabilities. According to the Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, individuals with disabilities have a combined income of nearly £400 billion. Of that figure, £100 billion is discretionary income.

By working to Web Accessibility Initiative ( WAI ) guidelines and using semantic mark-up, your website will be easily accessible, unlike the majority of your competitors!

Enhance Your Public Image:

Website accessibility issues are being highlighted every day. Don't be left behind. Lead the way, set the example and when you launch your site let everyone know that you are 'accessibility friendly'!