Web accessibility standards

Web Accessibility Standards
In today’s modern and developed world, it is essential for every element of a society to provide equal opportunity of success and an independent life to its each member. It has become important for a society to reshape and adopt itself in such a way that it take in to account the need of its every member with abilities and disabilities. This change in society is not only a sign of civilized culture but also of development and fairness.
In this aspect of inclusion of people with disabilities to live a free life without any limitation and restriction, accessibility standards plays a key role as guidelines. These standards provide the parameter, to make a place, website etc more easily accessible to people with disabilities. However, the standards are not same for every aspect of life that is to be made more accessible. The accessibility standards are different for physical structure and for electronic structure like websites because the accessibility need for both is different.
Web Accessibility Standards
The focus of web accessibility is primarily on two issues first being the means of assessing electronic information by disabled users and the second being good collaborative function of assistive devices on the web pages (Moss, pp. 23-25). In this regard, “ Web Accessibility Initiative” provides guidelines known as “ Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” (Moss, pp. 22-23). To date, two guidelines have been published known as “ WCAG 1. 0” in 1999 and “ WCAG 2. 0” in 2008 (Moss, pp. 24-26).
The latest set of guidelines i. e. “ WCAG 2. 0” is an improved version, which unlike the previous version uses simple language and real world examples so that the guidelines are simple to understand. This document has eliminated some previous out of date version guidelines like:
Non-empty form field by default
Use of access keys for important links
Table header labels provided with abbreviations
Use of only one Colum in a table for layout
Presence of non-linked text between different links
Client-side image maps link containing equivalent test links (Moss, n. d).
The new and improved guideline document 2. 0 provides with not only updates guidelines like:
Descriptive title for all pages
Turning Off of background noise
Forms having text based error messages
Also, provide with clever recommendations and common failure list that help web-designers to improve web accessibility (Moss, n. d).
Accessibility Considerations
Although no development has been made in term of accessibility, considerations and they represent old issues. However, the five most important accessibility considerations, which the web developer is to keep in his mind while designing and modifying any website are:
Diversification of devices and configuration: The web developers should consider the diversification of devices used by the web users.
Rich media content accessibility: Rich media like audio and video content is to be made accessible to all. Addition of transcripts and separate narrative track to the rich media help in it to be more accessible.
Colors: web designers should use such colors and color contract that helps the most in web display for people (Clark, 2002).
Navigation: As mostly navigation system is based on graphics, making image accessible will make navigation assessable right away. Use of access key and table index helps improve keyboard navigation (Clark, 2002).
Image Problem: Description for intricate images, alt text use on all images will help in better understanding to images in the webpage (Clark, 2002).
Websites with Accessibility Consideration
Two sites visited that support accessibility consideration are
Canadian Federal Government Website: with common look and feel standards.
Unilever Website: Following WCGA guidelines to AA level
Conclusion
Although things today have improved for people with disability but there is still a long way to go. Many improvements that needs to be made and many new rules that needs to be implemented.
Works Cited
Clark, Joe. Building Accessible Websites. New riders Press, 2002.
Moss, Trenton. WCAG 2. 0 The New W3C Accessibility Guidelines Evaluated. Web Credible, 2008.