All of us in the industry have heard of it, we have read about it, we have been to conferences and heard speakers talk about it, but do we actually practice it? In most cases, no. This could stem from sites being ancient, using old code back in the day when accessibility wasn’t a concern.

Today, it is. More and more sites are conforming to Section 508 and WAI standards. What are they and what are the differences? Those differences and what they are can be found below:

The basics though, are to make web sites accessible to those with disabilities, whether they are sight, hearing, or otherwise. If you’re not designing and developing not only web sites, but web applications, designing computer hardware, audio and video on a web site, telecom products, then you’re shutting out a portion of your potential audience.

Where is a good place to start? Well, this website for starters, but to dig deep into the nuts and bolts of it all, I would suggest Dive Into Accessibility and if you want to go even more in-depth, use your favorite search engine and search for… “accessibility”, simple enough!

My hope is, for personal reasons as well as professional, is to educate those who are either unaware or uneducated to what accessibility is or how to go about making web sites accessible.

Reach out and join an online community, educate yourself through the vast amount of online resources, attend a conference, such as An Event Apart, e-Access in London, is the major UK IT Accessibility event, or check out a calendar of accessibility conferences: Calendar of Events in Disability,Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology

I hope with this article, I have shed a little light and more and more designers and developers alike, will follow that path down the road to accessibility.

Front-End developer and Dad of 2. Destroyer of table-based layouts and manipulator of CSS. Wealth of knowledge regarding Accessibility and web development. Founder of: six03.com

@toddlibby