Website Accessibility

When you think about accessibility and websites you would think that the two are quite seperate. In fact the reality is that accessibility needs to be integral to the entire website and ideally thought of a stage one of building a new website.

There is also a conflict between a good looking website and a fully accessible website as the two cater for different markets. A person with no disabilities wants to see a good looking website when a person who is blind and being "read" the website only cares about content. Hence one of the cornerstones of fully accessible websites is the fact that no image should be "decorative" if there is an image there is needs to have a purpose and the relevant ALT tag to describe it.

That is why in most cases when people want the best of both worlds there are actually two websites, the good looking website and the text only website, with clear options to both.