Inaccessibility in California

A study shows that most city websites are unusable by a wide range of people, including blind, deaf, and mobility impaired individuals, as well as non-disabled users attempting to access government services with cutting edge technology such as Internet-enabled cell phones.

– An inability to use a website when images are not viewable. – An inability to easily adjust text to a larger size. – An inability to navigate a website without a mouse. – Poor performance when accessed via a slow internet connections. – Inconsistent or non-existent site navigation.

The ramblings and seeming cacophany of web terms such as CSS and XHTML mean little to the average web user. How a web developer designs his page has little impact on most users. Why is that? The vast majority of users access the internet using a mouse, keyboard, monitor and web browser. Of those, the majority use Internet Explorer as their browser.

Where reports like this show an impact are on the hundreds of thousands of users who have special needs:

a) an audible browser/screen reader (blind)
b) Larger easier to read fonts or require a lower resolution.

To add to that number, many people utilize cell phones and palm pilots to access information. And have you ever tried to print a page, just to have half of the information lost off the side of the page?

These are all accessibility issues. How accessible is your website? When someone who uses an older browser incapable of displaying complex nested tables views your site, will it be a jumbled mess?

What will happen if a blind person views your flash enabled site? Did you know that a Flash movies is seen as a single object and cannot be interpreted by plaintext browsers and screen readers?

You see accessiblity means nothing to anyone until it impacts them.

If only one percent of 6 billion internet users require special consideration, then that is 6 million users who I would rather not chase away due to inaccessiblity issues.

Something to think about.

Cheers,
Aaron

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About the Author: Aaron Brazell is the lead editor of Technosailor.com and a social media expert. His passion is to see companies and individuals use the internet and web technologies wisely and effectively to promote their brands and companies. He served as Director of Technology at b5media from 2005-2008 and is currently an independent consultant.