Web Development - Accessibility

What are the benefits of attending this course?
Making your website accessible to all, regardless of technical limitations or disability has become a major issue for web designers. Websites designed without taking accessibility into consideration exclude certain sectors of the population, limit your customer base and may ultimately be illegal. The Disability Discrimination Act applies to internet content as much as to other media.
As such it is now important for companies to be aware that they should be complying with guidelines. Upon completing this course you will have gained an important insight into the realistic workings of Accessibility. This will inspire you to evaluate our own systems and bring them in line.
Our course shows you the added company benefits that will improve your website and its features.
Upon completing this course you will have gleaned an important insight into the realistic workings of Accessibility. This will inspire you to evaluate our own systems and bring them in line. Follow up courses are available on a oneto-one basis focusing on specific issues.
Course Outline
Background to Accessibility

• About the W3C
• About Webaim
• Development of WAI guidelines
• Why be accessible anyway?
• Overview of the current legal perspective

Who has access issues?

• Identifying key disability groups
• Understanding the challenges disabled users face online
• Overview of technologies used by people with disabilities

Understanding the WAI guidelines

• How the guidelines are structured
• Rationale for dividing guidelines into degrees of priority
• Review of priority one guidelines
• Review of priority two guidelines
• Review of priority three guidelines

Compatability and web design

• Using semantic mark up and style sheets
• Navigation design issues
• Careful use of colour
• Problems with scripts and other dynamic content
• Working with images, ALT and LONGDESC tags
• Using tables for layout (or not)
• Using frames and applets
• Accessible Flash
• Issues with web forms

Developing an action plan

• Auditing your site
• Text only browsers and a view of your site
• About bobby and other access checking tools
• Reading the results of a bobby and wave test
• The W3C accessibility checklist
• Identifying the right level of accessibility

Questions and answers