Continue reading to discover how accessibility can benefit you, as well as your visitors.

What is accessibility

It is a term that is more associated with architectural thought, rather than Web Site Design. There is a legislation, which determines minimum standards for new buildings. As a result, new buildings today often have wheelchair ramps, accessible lifts and disability parking spaces, allowing anyone with disabilities to gain access to a building, use provided services, buy products, and talk with people inside.

With web sites, term traditionally refers to development of sites that are accessible to "all" users who may want to access them -- in other words, "Universal Web Sites." Tim Berners-Lee, W3C director and inventor of World Wide Web, defines it as "access by everyone, regardless of disability."

Even though World Wide Web is continuously growing, many users:

* use speech browsers or eyes busy/hands busy, as businessmen in cars; * don't have latest graphical browsers and plug-ins; * surf with slow modems, or reside in rural or remote areas with limited access to Internet; * browse without graphics, using text-only browsers or subscribe to non-graphic services; * access in noisy, high- or low-light environments;

There are also many users with disabilities as;

* Visual - blind, low vision, color blind; * Auditory - deaf, hard of hearing; * Motor/physical - paraplegic; * Cognitive/learning - dyslexic, learning disabled. More at WebAIM: http://www.webaim.org/techniques/disability-types

Accessibility increases benefits for both parties: User and Web site Provider.

Users benefits from accessibility

Every user, regardless of physical, sensory and cognitive disabilities, constraints and/or technological barriers can:

* access information; * use services; * buy products; * talk to people associated with each Web site.

In other words, satisfied users may become loyal users, continue using web site, and even recommend to others. Providers benefits from accessibility

* Increase audience; * Improve maintainability and efficiency; * Improve and regain reputation; * Satisfy existing and future legal requirements; * and much more.

Auxiliary benefits of accessible web design

The first thing to do is to plan your objectives. They must be reflected in your web site. You must also think of visitors. You are making website for them and not to yourself alone. It must cater to their needs. I mean individual needs.

The next step is to think about design. This involves layout, colors and content. These elements are crucial since they make up totality of your web site. Wrong choice of color may result to hard to read content. Because of this, your visitors might be annoyed and switch to another site. The drawback is, you might lose all your visitors. Sure you don’t want it to happen so be extra careful with these elements.