Universally Accessible Websites
What do you mean by Universally Accessible?
We mean that anyone and everyone who visits any of our sites will be able to easily access all the information there, no matter what setup they are using or whatever type or level of disability they might have.
Is that not the same with all websites?
Unfortunately, it is absolutely NOT the same with all websites. If you have a visual disability, you will know that already. There is a quite shocking number of websites which deny information to people who are blind or have poor vision or are colour-blind or have manual dexterity problems.
Then there is an even more shocking number which deny access to people who are not using exactly the same setup as the designer, for example, people who do not have Javascript enabled or Flash installed, or who use a handheld device or mobile phone or a text-only setup.
But isn't the whole point of a website to give information? Why would anyone spend time and money on building a way of giving people information then arbitrarily deny access to so many of them?
Sorry, haven't a clue. It does seem perverse, doesn't it? Maybe they're not aware of just how many people they are excluding. Or maybe they don't care.
For many unscrupulous and/or incompetent web developers, the WWW has been a "screw-you-Jack" environment in terms of accessibility and usability. They've been getting away with it by taking advantage of the ignorance of their clients.
This couldn't continue forever, and fortunately it is changing now. It is now established in law that legislation guaranteeing equal access rights for people with disabilities applies as much to websites as it does in the offline world.
Sooner or later the owners of websites which are only accessible to a subset of their visitors are going to have to accept that they've been getting conned by cowboys and either get their sites rebuilt to conform to the law or accept the inevitable consequences.