Designing Accessible Websites

Fortunately, there are techniques to overcome the limitations faced by users with disabilities. As early as in 1997, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) was launched, pointing an important directive of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WAI has published a series of accessibility guidelines, including "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0," User Agent Accessibility Guidelines, and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 "discuss accessibility issues and provide accessible design solutions" in 14 areas:

1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.

2. Don’t rely on color alone.

3. Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.

4. Clarify natural language usage.

5. Create table that transform gracefully.

6. Ensue that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.

7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.

8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.

9. Design for device-independence.

10. Use interim solutions.

11. Use W3C technologies.

12. Provide context and orientation information.

13. Provide clear navigation mechanism.

14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple

For specific checkpoints about each guideline, check the Web Content Accessibility Guideline 1.0 document.

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