Accessibility
Cornwell Internet have won a Visionary Design Award for the website we run for Anne Fine, the second Children's Laureate (www.annefine.co.uk).
At the NLB Visionary Design Awards ceremony: left to right, Anne Fine, Roger Cornwell, Jean Rogers and Loyd Grossman (guest speaker)
Anne Fine's website was the winner in the Children's Website category at the Visionary Design Awards 2004. Another of our sites - designed for Newcastle Quaker Meeting (www.quakers-in-newcastle.org.uk) - was shortlisted in the Voluntary Organisations category.
The Visionary Design Awards are a project of the National Library for the Blind, which works with website owners and designers to help them design accessible websites for blind and partially-sighted users. The 2004 Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public - and a website is a service!
The internet is a great leveller, allowing people who are blind or housebound to gain access to a whole world of information. In the early days of the web, when all this information was in the form of text, all sites were accessible to visually impaired users, who could, for example, reset the text display size in their browser to magnify the text, or employ a screen reader to read out the screen text via the PC speakers. Yet now that many sites are designed using graphic and multimedia elements, over 80% of sites are inaccessible to visually impaired users - and despite the Disability Discrimination Act, we are continually seeing new or renovated sites appear which have been designed with no regard for accessibility.
The emphasis on usability has always been central to Cornwell Internet's philosophy: we believe web sites should be content-driven, displaying your message in a way that grabs the attention without being gimmicky. It's not a place to show off our skills, it's a place to show off yours. It's a small step from this approach to ensuring that as many visitors as possible, regardless of disability, find your site easy to use.
The National Library for the Blind provides a checklist of ten points for a more accessible website. Many of these are simple common sense, or make the site easier to navigate for all users, not just those with disabilities.
These points are explained at greater length on the Visionary Design website.
We are aware that visual impairment is not the only disability which affects a person's ability to use a website: for example, reduced manual dexterity can make it difficult to use a mouse, so some users have browsers which allow them to tab from one element of the page to another. The technology by which people "view" websites is enormously varied, and constantly evolving. We regard it as a matter of professionalism to do our best to keep up to date, and we are always interested in feedback from visitors to our sites, with any disability or none.