Web Аccessibility or Web Compliance?

What is web accessibility? The concept of accessibility, also sometimes called web compliance, considers all people equal members of society under all conditions. The property of an Internet resource that considers all possible problems that a person may face when using it is called web accessibility.

Understanding that your site users may face several problems is the most important quality of a professional web developer. It is unnecessary to assume that the user has a mouse, that the monitor can display, and people can see all the images posted on the site, that each visitor has a Flash support module installed, etc.

In addition to people who require assistive technology, there are other people for whom this will also be true.

Relevance of web accessibility. When creating a truly high-quality site, the issue of its accessibility for all categories of users, regardless of their physical capabilities and limitations, should be one of the primary tasks. 

As a rule, the mention of accessibility is irritating for most developers since it is believed that this aspect of product development is raised only in some special attitude towards people with disabilities and is perceived by them in an aura of social dependency. Therefore, a project often lacks such properties or only has formal support for them. However, this is fundamentally a misunderstanding of the issue.

Who needs web compliance or accessibility?

When things are created assuming that all members of the human race are the same, they will always be inappropriate for some people, if not for all at once. Even the prison uniform, which is an example of a single style, is differentiated in size. Indeed, the accessibility of technology is directly related to people with disabilities, but the scope of its application does not end there.

For example, the pilot of a supersonic fighter is experiencing severe overloads, which impose certain restrictions on the actions that he can perform. If military aircraft were created without considering the availability of their technologies in such extreme situations, then aviation would never have reached the modern level. In addition, several technologies are intended at first glance for people with disabilities, and they are also used by absolutely healthy people. Ramps are useful not only for wheelchair users, but also for baby carriages, as well as ambulance gurneys, voice notifications about the name of the current public transport stop will come in handy not only for the blind, but also to an absent-minded or asleep person, and so on. All of this applies equally to the realm of web technologies and their web accessibility.

By creating an Internet site taking into account the textual duplication of graphic data and clear scaling of information, the developer receives not only a resource that can be used by people with visual or motor impairments but also a resource that will remain workable products for ordinary visitors who turn off graphics in their browsers from for non-unlimited tariff plans for Internet access or accessing its website from devices with a small screen, for example, mobile phones.

Thus, the answer to the question of who needs web compliance is that everyone needs it, and first of all, it is necessary for the web developers themselves, although they often do not realize it.

• Potential markets. In a capitalist society, the solution to all issues often comes down to financial motivation. For those who believe that spending money, even if insignificant, on adapting web compliance for users with disabilities is not justified, there are also arguments that correspond to their philosophy of life.

A disabled person is the same potential consumer, like all other people, and he, like everyone else, participates in the formation of the market capacity. Ignoring potential markets due to the reluctance of a small investment in resource availability during its creation is a vivid example of ineffective management. In addition, if a resource is created from scratch, then the initial set of web compliance parameters in it will practically not increase the project budget in any way because accessibility is achieved not by using some additional expensive add-ons, but, as a rule, only by observing several rules within the framework of ordinary Internet -technologies.

Here’s a real-life example:

In 2000, the British supermarket chain Tesco launched a project to create a separate version of its chain grocery store specifically for visually impaired people. Since then, Tesco officials have said their network’s annual revenue has grown by £ 13 million. Thus, if Tesco did not view visually impaired people as potential customers for their products, they would be missing out on the market worth at least £ 13 million. In addition, you should consider raising the status of their brand, since demonstrating that you care about each member of society can only improve the company’s image.

• Sellers of products and services need to be aware that people with different abilities need the same things and services. Without understanding this, your company will have guaranteed economic losses.

It is necessary to distinguish between accounting and economic profit. Suppose you make a profit of $ 1 million, but at the same time ignore the market with a potential profit of $ 2 million. In that case, your company is in profit only from an accounting point of view; from an economic point of view, you have losses of 2 million, and your economic profit is negative. Moreover, these lost 2 million are not opportunity costs since they are not mutually exclusive compared to existing income. In such a situation, ignoring web compliance, you can in no way be considered a successful manager.