A Beginners Guide To Accessibility - Enhance.ie

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Apr 29, 2013 - online was accessible to as many people as ... While in this example, providing a description of an image
A Beginners Guide to Accessibility

A Beginners Guide To Accessibility

© 2013 Enhance.ie.All Rights Reserved. Phone: 01 8512800 Email: [email protected] - enhance.ie reference doc: en-bg-acc01 this update 29/04/2013

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A Beginners Guide to Accessibility

Accessibility Notes Ever since its public inception, the institutions that govern web standards and protocols have endeavored to make sure that information online was accessible to as many people as reasonably

possible,

including

those

with

disabilities or special needs. To this end, web standards are driving design and function. The National Disability Authority have adopted the General W3C web accessibility guidelines and we would highly recommend developing to them: (http://universaldesign.ie/useandapply/ict/itaccessibilityguidelines/web).

Levels of Compliance There are 3 levels of standard a site can be designed to; W3C Level A, level AA or Level AAA. Sometimes referred to as priority 1, 2 and 3. The higher the A rating the more accessible the site to people with sabilities, level A is a good introduction to accessible design, it ensures the minimum requirements are met, level AA is becoming the most common level to design to, it meets the minimum and goes a long way towards satisfying all requirements. Level AAA is the highest level obtainable and the most difficult to design to, generally compromises in content and structure have to made to ensure this standard is obtained.

Phone: 01 8512800 Email: [email protected] - enhance.ie reference doc: en-bg-acc01 this update 29/04/2013

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A Beginners Guide to Accessibility

Accessibility & SEO We’ll let you in on a little secret… while search engine optimisation is an endless subject and we comply with all of the most current best practices, you can never stop improving. While many web design agencies will cut corners on accessibility, those on the top of their game know that it does wonders for your SEO. The reason being is that essentially accessibility is about providing more than one means of digesting the same content. As a simple example, providing a description of an image to a visually impaired person also provides a text-based description to a search engine. This means the search engine can understand the image content on a website more accurately. While in this example, providing a description of an image is simple SEO best practice and both areas are broad and complex, the principal of providing multiple methods to understand content is the same throughout. Read more about the subject here.

Phone: 01 8512800 Email: [email protected] - enhance.ie reference doc: en-bg-acc01 this update 29/04/2013

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