I will admit that when I first started designing websites, I did not think about making them accessible to people with disabilities. Of course I did do some things to make my designs accessible without realizing it - using tableless page layout, separating markup (html) from presentation (CSS), using well formed markup including heading tags and identifying images using alt tags - but there was no special effort, just working toward coding using web standards.

When I started reading a bit more about accessibility though, I realized that there was much more to do and that I needed to consider more than those individuals who would experience a website via a screen reader. One must also consider hearing impaired visitors, those who cannot use a mouse (who may use a touch screen or only the keyboard), those who suffer from seizure disorders and those who may only be temporarily disabled.

In addition to it being good business to serve disabled users - they spend more time on the internet per week than a non-disabled users and their discretionary income is at $175 billion and growing, it is just the right thing to do. In America, 1 in 5 people has some sort of disability and 1 in 10 has a severe disability. Having an accessible web opens up much more of the world to people who may be home bound. These individuals can now shop and participate in a variety of social networks. Have you ever considered how satisfying it is for a person with low vision to be able to read the newspaper on their own with the help of a screen reader?

As I enhance my web design skill set, I will certainly focus on creating accessible websites. A few specific areas I will work on are forms, scalable text, tab access and using Javascript to enhance the behavior of a web page while not limiting access to the content itself if Javascript is disabled.

This is a goal all web designers should have. It’s the right thing to do after all. For more details on current accessibility guidelines, visit the website of the Web Accessibility Initiative.