A - Which legally you must comply with.

AA - Which you should achieve; or your site will still be inaccessible to a large number of people.

AAA - Which should be aspired towards as far as is possible.

Achieving accessibility Practical measures you can take include structuring site so that it will work with a screen-reader; ensuring site can be navigated without aid of a mouse; and enabling viewers to change text size and background colours.

Ensure that you provide alt-tags for sounds and video, not just for images; and make sure that text you provide is descriptive (i.e. not 'company logo'). You should also make use of descriptive links (i.e. not 'click here' or 'learn more'), as screen-readers read links out of context.

How to check your site There are many partly-automated 'accessibility checkers' on web (the most well known being Bobby: bobby.watchfire.com and most thorough being Site Valet: valet.webthing.com/access/url.html); which assess websites against their interpretations of W3C-WAI guidelines. You can use these 'checkers' to see how your website fares accessibility-wise, but you must not rely on them.

Accessibility checkers can't be perfect, and it must be emphasised that a website is not accessible just because one or more says so. For example, most don't check whether alternative image text is appropriate; and those that do mostly get it wrong. (Believe it or not, technology still has its limitations)… The checkers can also (less commonly) note accessibility issues where there are none, due to their interpretation of guidelines.

Does accessible = boring? Accessibility does not mean that your website has to be black and white, boring, or text-only. Many sites have used text-only pages as a solution to accessibility; however by following W3C guidelines it should be unnecessary in almost all cases to go down this route.

Take a look around www.fwoss.com. Our site is neither colourless nor dull, yet it is AAA compliant throughout. Accessible websites do not need to be designed very differently to inaccessible ones; they just need to be carefully constructed with flexibility in mind.

What you can do Getting your website accessible need not be a headache if you go to a qualified software development company. Make sure you run their website through one of above checkers first, to see how it fairs.

This is not an exhaustive list and not all CMS' will offer above features. However with such a wide variety of systems available, you should ensure you take some time to find one that is right for your business.

What about pricing? This will largely depend on size of your website, number of users that will be updating it through CMS and amount of functionality you require.

As a (very) rough pricing guide; CMS' suitable for SME's range from as little as £350 per user to as much as £30,000. For larger businesses, enterprise level CMS' start at around £30,000 and go right up to around £250,000.

With such a huge variety of systems and pricing; it is highly recommended that you look around and get some advice before purchasing one.

Where can I get one? You can get in touch with CMS supplier if you know which is right for you. Alternatively, you can get in touch with a software company or consultant such as us - we'll be happy to advise you on best way forward. Happy updating...

This article is copyright Fire Without Smoke Software 2003. Permission must be sought from www.fwoss.com or info@fwoss.com for any reproduction.