What is web аccessibility?

Accessibility on the Internet means that all sites and their elements are made in such a way that people with disabilities can use them. If websites and online applications are designed appropriately, they can be used by people with disabilities. However, the limited availability of Internet sites and network applications makes their use difficult or even impossible for some people. The concept of accessibility, also sometimes called web compliance, considers all people equal members of society under all conditions.

Providing web accessibility to the Internet is beneficial for individuals, businesses, and society at large. International web compliance standards define the necessary conditions for the implementation of web accessibility.

Some people may have a visual impairment. They may need to use your site with a keyboard and a screen reader (a screen reader that reads text on your site to the user). If your site code doesn’t allow you to do this, these people won’t use your site at all. Therefore, you must think over all aspects of web compliance for your website in advance.

Also, hands and fingers may not work well for your website visitors. This can be a problem when using touch devices. If the elements on your site that need to be clicked are small and close together, people with motor impairments will not be able to use your site either.

In general, a site is web-accessible if anyone can use it, and for this, it has to be taken into account various types of disabilities.

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.

To whom does the site web accessibility depend?

Web compliance depends on the front-end code. So, that means everyone working on the front-end affects it. The list includes:

• front-end (or full-stack) developers;
• designers;
• content creators (authors of text and images).

In addition, these are developers who decide how other people’s work is added to the frontend. For example, a content creator might provide some text, but the developers convert it into code. The author of the text can add their creations to the site on their own, but the developers set up the systems for this.

And since developers most influence web accessibility, they need to know what it is and how to make web products accessible.

Such knowledge will be helpful to other people, particularly designers and content creators, but to a lesser extent. They can either study the topic independently or ask the developers to teach them what they need to know.