Legal obligations A 100 million-strong global audience is hardly a market not worth targeting. There has always been a sound business case, as well as a moral impetus, for web accessibility. Now there is also a legal obligation to make your website accessible to disabled users.

The 1999 Disability Discrimination Act makes it clear that information online should be accessible to disabled people. Although there has been no UK court action to date, there have been high profile cases in other countries where claimants have been awarded significant compensation for disability discrimination as a result of a non-compliant website.

The UK Disability Rights Commission recently announced that one thousand websites will be investigated for their ability to be accessed by Britain's 8.5 million disabled people. You should comply with Disability Discrimination laws as a matter of best practice. Everyone will benefit from your accessibility, including you.

W3C-WAI The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created in October 1994 to lead World Wide Web to its full potential, partly by creating some common standards to ensure interoperability. This commitment includes promoting a high degree of usability for people with disabilities.

The 'Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0' (WCAG) is a W3C specification providing guidance on accessibility of Web sites for people with disabilities. Developed by W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C-WAI), specification contains fourteen guidelines which are general principles of accessible design. These guidelines not only make pages more accessible to people with disabilities, they make them more accessible to all users, including those using different technologies to view pages. The WAI home page (www.w3.org/WAI) has up-to-date information on Web Accessibility Initiative.

What is a CMS? A content management system is a piece of software that allows you to edit content on your website without having any web design skills.

In first instance, a web designer creates a series of CMS templates which your pages are dropped into. You then use a simple interface to add, edit or delete content on your pages. You can also quickly and easily create new pages yourself.

Why do I need one? There are obvious benefits to installing a CMS. Your website need not change in style at all: it can simply be re-created in CMS. You can then update it yourself as often as you like, without need to call a web design company and pay for changes each time.

If you update your website on a regular basis, and do not currently use a CMS, you could save a lot of time and money by implementing one. If you do not yet have a website and are about to have one developed, you should think very carefully about what you will be using it for. To stay competitive in this day and age, websites need to be far more than a static brochure. If you think you will be updating your content more than a couple of times each month, creating your website using a CMS is highly recommended.

If you do not update your website at all, you should be asking yourself whether you ought to start. If your customers see same thing each time they visit your website, they will quickly stop visiting. A CMS will allow you to quickly and easily transform your website into an interesting and dynamic marketing tool.