Brief description of Web Accessibility

What exactly is Web Accessibility ?

Simply put, web accessibility is about making a site accessible to the largest range of people possible. For the majority of website owners, this is simply good business sense. After all, the more people you have using your site the better.

Making a website accessible involves removing potential barriers to access and one of the best ways of doing this is to build sites to 'web standards'.

Who does this affect ?

People often think that web accessibility relates only to people with physical disabilities. Although they are often most affected by poorly designed sites, accessibility is a much wider issue and at a fundamental level, affects us all.

* Blind, visually impaired and colour blind people are probably the most obvious
group of individuals affected by accessibility issues. This group also makes up
a very large percentage of web surfers
* People with physical disabilities, such as those with impaired mobility
* People surfing the web using mobile phones and PDA's. These people are possibly
the most affluent and technically advanced group of people suffering from web accessibility issues.
* People using old browsers or old computers. Many companies and organizations
have standardized on older browser versions and don't use the latest computer
equipment.
* People using slow internet connections.
* The 'Silver Surfer' is one of the largest growing markets on the web. This
sector has accessibility issues such as reduced mobility, reduced hand-eye
co-ordination and poor vision.
* Young Internet users can also have poor hand-eye co-ordination, coupled with a
low reading age.
* People who don't speak or understand English fluently.

The positive aspects of having an accessible website are:

* Ability to tap into affluent niche markets like the 'Silver Surfer' or people using PDA's and phones.
* The positive PR that comes from adopting a socially responsible attitude and complying with web best practices.
* Accessible websites are inherently more search engine friendly. After all, Google is the largest "blind user" on the web.
* Increased turnover from more people using your site.

The negative aspects of an inaccessible website are:

* You could be turning away large numbers of potential customers each day without even knowing it.
* When people have a positive experience of a website they generally don't tell people. But if they have a negative experience they are likely to tell everybody!
* Excluding people from your website can generate very negative PR.
* Your website might even find itself open to litigation.

Web accessibility is a broad issue and one that affects both web users and website owners.

Source / Read more about Web accessibility & its effects at

The Business Case for Web Accessibility

Colour contrast checking tools to improve the accessibility of your design

If text does not have sufficient contrast compared to its background, people will have problems. People with color blindness or other visual impairments as well as people browsing the Web under less than ideal circumstances (bad monitor, window reflections, sunlight hitting the screen) may not be able to read the text, at least not without difficulty.

With that background out of the way, on to the actual color contrast checking tools. Some tools are Web based, while others are standalone applications or browser extensions that you run locally on your computer.

The list:

Colour Contrast Check: The tool gives you immediate feedback by showing what the chosen colour combination looks like and whether it passes the test.

Colour Contrast Analyser: You will need to enter the values for foreground and background colours into a form and submit it, after which the results are displayed.

Colour Contrast Visualizer: Using a slightly different approach, Tom Hooper’s color Contrast Visualizer helps you find acceptable color combinations by visualizing the colors that provide sufficient contrast on a color palette. color Contrast Visualizer is available in Flash and Adobe AIR versions, so you will need support for either of those to use it.

Colour Contrast Analyzer Firefox Extension: Instead of having you enter each colour combination manually, Gez Lemon’s Firefox extension finds all text elements in a document and examines the difference between foreground and background colours for them. It displays the results in a new tab, complete with previews of the colours. This can look a bit overwhelming, but it’s a good way of finding problematic areas of a design. Obviously this tool does not work with images – you’ll need an HTML document for it to work.

CSS Analyser: The CSS Analyser does a colour contrast test of your CSS. It also validates the CSS and checks that relevant text sizes are specified in a relative unit of measurement.

Luminosity Contrast Ratio Analyzer: This tool tests foreground and background colour combinations according to an algorithm developed by the Trace R&D Center.

Vischeck: The online tool simulates colour blindness on an image that you upload or on a web page that you specify, while the Photoshop plugin changes the colours of the document you are working on.

Contrast Analyser, Version 2.0: A standalone application available for Windows and Mac OS X. You can specify the foreground and background colours numerically or by pulling sliders, it will check and preview the selected colours against various types of colour blindness.

Graybit: It lets you submit a URL to a web page which will be converted to grayscale and displayed in your web browser.

Sim Daltonism: Available for Mac OS X only, this standalone application does not calculate colour contrast, but is still very useful. It simulates various kinds of colour blindness in realtime, which makes it easy to check if a design is likely to cause problems.


Source : 10 colour contrast checking tools to improve the accessibility of your design