Does your business have a website? I bet it does. But is that site as accessible to everyone as it could be? With more and more businesses turning to the web to promote their company and sell their products, and more customers using the web as their first call when looking for goods or services, it’s important to get it right.

A report published last year by Nomensa highlighted the fact that nearly all retail-focused sites are failing to cater for disabled online visitors. Even if you don’t sell products or services on the web, websites are increasingly becoming the first point of contact many people have with a company. Can you afford to put people off at the first hurdle?

It is also important to remember that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, makes it illegal to discriminate against those with disabilities. This should be interpreted to extend to websites as well as other areas. It applies to anyone providing a service, whether in the public, private or voluntary sectors.

However, making your site accessible doesn’t have to break the bank. By following a few simple guidelines, set up by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), you can go a long way to letting everyone make the most of your site. Some of these guidelines include:

• Simple, easy to read copy
• Re-sizable text
• Good contrast between text and background
• Meaningful alt-tags for images
• Minimal use of Flash-based technology or time-specific elements (such as scrolling text)
• Access keys to allow your site to be navigated without a mouse
• Hyperlink text that makes sense when read out of context (instead of the dreaded ‘click here’)
• Transcripts for any audio or video content
• Small image files to cater for those with slower machines

These, of course, are just basic tips. You can learn a lot more by reading the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be a teccy to understand it.

You wouldn’t turn your disabled customers away from your bricks and mortar premises, so make sure you’re not doing it online.

Web accessibility tips from the RNIB.

More tips on making your site accessible from Webcredible.

An accessibility overview on Wikipedia.