What is GAAD? It is the day web developers across the globe get together and try to raise awareness and know-how on making websites accessible. Every website developer is urged to test at least one page on their website for accessibility, fix any issues, blog about it and urge others to do the same.
What is web accessibility?
Website accessibility is about designing a website or application to allow all users to access it. A website is used in many different ways by many different people. Think of it as having ramp access into public buildings as well as stairs. Common issues include colour contrast (Pink text, on a pink background? No! Black on white? yes!), giving images ‘alt text’, and defining headers so screen readers can follow the order of a page. Making our website accessible helps the user but also helps us to deliver our services in the best way possible. You can watch some videos on other web accessibility perspectives.
Take part in GAAD
You don’t have to be a developer to take part, you can test what it is like to use a website with only a keyboard for an hour. Visit the global accessibility website to find out how you can take part.
You can also test any website yourself with an automated testing tool from Wave. This tool is web based- all you need to do is copy in a web URL. This will not pick up all accessibility issues, some issues can only be picked up by with manual testing, but will give you a good idea. Feel free to test any web page or application on Dorsetforyou.com and come back to us with any issues.
You can also take part in the conversation on twitter, using #gaad, other popular hash tags for web accessibility discussion are #accessibility #a11y #gova11y.
Web accessibility on Dorsetforyou
The Dorsetforyou site is tested twice a year. Once as an audit and once as part of a site wide test ran by Socitm (the Society of IT Management). We may also get tested by a 3rd party company at any point without any prior knowledge, this happened recently.
We have been credited this year by the DAC for passing their accessibility audit and we were also tested by Sitemorse and found to be in the top 10 of accessible council websites.
Why we do it
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) requires you not to discriminate against a disabled person when providing a service and makes reference to websites. The wording is not clear and can unfortunately lead to some developers arguing that they don’t need to fix accessibility issues. This is changing and the EU has announced a new clearer law on digital accessibility.
We believe all websites should be accessible because it is the right thing to do. Why wouldn’t you want to make your website inclusive for everyone? I also find there isn’t any extra work if you do it right the first time around.
Accessible websites are better for everyone and the line between accessibility and usability for all is blurred.
Web accessibility is essential for some but useful for all
When designing or testing websites the DDA can be very useful to fix general usability issues. Often an accessibility issue which affects a minority of people is also a usability issue for everyone else. At times the only way to get a developer to fix an issue is if we use accessibility as the argument.
Here’s an example of a usability/accessibility issue, the form fields and label are too far apart. Some users won’t be able to use this, and many will struggle. Despite being a well known design issue, proven with eye monitoring tests, many systems still get developed like this.
What I will be doing
I will try and tackle some of most challenging developers to fix issues on our sites, in particular ones with content designed for disabled users and reference GAAD in the hope it inspires them to make a difference. What can you do? spread the word and don’t stand for inaccessible websites!
