Website Accessibility

There are almost 10 million disabled people in the UK with a combined spending power in the region of 80 billion pounds per annum. Furthermore there are millions of other individuals that are affected by sensory, physical and/or cognitive impairments, including those resulting from the ageing process.

Website accessibility should be high on your list of priorities. It is often forgotten that many users of the internet have some form of disability, be it a visual impairment or a problem with hearing. As a result, the majority of websites on the internet are inaccessible to at least one area of society. With new legislation introduced by the Disability Rights Commission, it is now illegal for websites to discriminate against users with disabilities. If your website provides a service to the general public, that service must be available to everyone who visits your website. If this service can not be utilised by someone with a visual impairment for example, you could be breaking the law.

Xyone can perform a complete website accessibility audit for your website to identify its accessibility and make recommendations to ensure it meets the standards set out by the Disability Discrimination Act.

There are 3 levels of website accessibility accreditation which your website can achieve under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as set out by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):

• Level A is the most basic level and ensures that all Priority 1 criteria identified by the W3C Website Accessibility Initiative – WCAG 1.0, are met. This level is the minimum standard a site should meet.

• Level AA is the second level of accreditation given to a website under the WCAG. All websites should aspire to at least level AA, which ensures that all Priority 1 and Priority 2 criteria identified in the WCAG are met.

• Level AAA is the highest level of accessibility that a website can achieve. To reach this level, a website must meet both Priority 1 and 2 criteria and also Priority 3 criteria, as identified by the WCAG.

On meeting the required levels of website accessibility, Xyone can issue your website with one of the following logos, indicating your level of conformance to the WCAG: