420 Design Blog
Having a site everyone can reach
24 Nov 2005 | Angie H
The comment below was posted after an article on BusinessWeek.com (I couldn't find the article the commenter referred to after a brief search). The commenter makes a crucial point about people like him - those with physical disabilities - who have large budgets for spending and would do well at shopping online but can't due to the poor design and coding structure of so many websites.
I bought a copy of the BusinessWeek issue dated Nov. 21 titled Smart Ways to Use the Web. The issue has excellent articles which will be good reference material. I was particularly interested to read about a company called WSI which is offering Web accessibility services to business owners. They show how it makes business sense to make a Web site accessible by all, especially by people like me who have physical disabilities. I find most Web sites frustrating because they are not user friendly for people like me who also have huge spending budgets and would be better off shopping online but can't! I also read the company's full report on this subject on technology-reports.com and am happy that people are now thinking about creating "wheelchair ramps to the Internet".
This is where accessible web design comes into play. Coding for web standards - something we consistently do here at 420 Design - allows online businesses to reach a much larger audience, including those like the commenter above. But accessibility is much more than making sites available for the physically impaired. It is also about making sites accessible for as wide an audience as possible - from those with disabilities to the tech-savvy who surf the web from mobile phones or PDAs.
In "real life" (i.e. not online), any business would be blasted for making their store inaccessible to any group of people. Yet so many do this in the online market. And it's unfortunate. Apart from the potential of increased sales and profits, making your site accessible positions your company in a much better light than many others. This is just one of the many benefits of web standards.
Want to learn more about web standards? Visit any of the following sites:
- The Web Standards Project
- The World Wide Web Consortium
- Web Standards Explained
- Section 508 Explained
- About Web Standards
Accessibility + Usability, Web Design + Development