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They spend their dough in pretty much the same proportions as the rest of us.

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Time and time again we hear that pre Christmas sales are disappointingly low, that high street stores are struggling to meet expected profit margins, yet curiously many of them continue to ignore the 1 in 7 people in the UK who would find the ability to shop easily online the greatest Christmas gift of all.

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It just that someone who makes a living off the backs of the disabled and disability wants to boost their case.

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I will finish by saying that the case for the truly, genuinely disabled having access to life of quality is undeniable.

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Looking through your posts that does seem to be your forte...

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Here we go again, take a look at this.

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So what are you saying here? You only need to cater for the uninformed?

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What I'm trying to say is acessibility and attractive websites are not mutually exclusive - it takes a bit of research and a bit of planning.

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In the world where my customers live, I can explain to them the issues and potential liability. I can offer to improve accessibility for 10% more. The risk and choice is theirs, not mine.

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And where are you living? http://www.csreurope.org/csrinfo/csrdisability/DisabilityFactsandfigures/

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As with everything involved in this topic there's a fair amount of argument about whether skip links should be visible or hidden - if they're visible they can help people who just prefer tabbing around the site plus in theory PDA users would like it as it goes straight to the content.

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I bow to the greater knowledge of the Usability & Accessibility (UA) Working Group

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Color-blindnesses prevents many more people from fully utilizing web sites than true disabilities, but how many designers even discuss that with their customers?

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After 71 postings I have no facts that I could use to convince customers to change their priorities.

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Why Should I make an Accessible Website?

The advantages of having an accessible website are numerous and fall into four key categories.

Business benefits

Many organisations are now realising the importance of website accessibility and are taking steps to modify their existing website. However, a startling number are not. They say that impaired people do not access their website so why should they make it accessible? Quite simply, impaired users do not access their website because they may be unable to.

When it comes to internet users with some form of impairment that may prevent them accessing a website easily, the statistics are somewhat startling:

· 10 million - The number of people with some form of registered disability in the United Kingdom
· 2 million - The number of UK residents with sight problems
· One in 12 men and one in 200 women have some form of colour blindness

Admittedly there is likely to be some overlap within these groups, however, these groups provide a total of approximately 48% of the UK population who could potentially have difficulty in using a website.

The combined spending power of these people is estimated to be £80 billion.
People who use the internet do so using a variety of technologies. People may use browsers that do not support images or other visual components of websites. An accessible website will still be usable by people who may not have the latest software installed, or programs downloaded to view the website as the designer intended.

Similarly, an accessible website will be compatible with new technologies. Users may be trying to access a website using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a mobile telephone, webTV or an in-car browser. It is estimated that over one third of the world’s population will own a wireless device by 2008.

People, generally, are impatient when they use the internet. As of May 2005, only 49% of people accessing the internet in the UK did so via broadband. A website that has been designed with accessibility in mind will load significantly faster.

It is not only impaired users who may experience difficulty in using a website. Other users who will benefit from an accessible website include:

· The elderly
· Children
· People whose first language is not English
· People who are from outside your industry
· People who may not understand technical phrases or jargon

A good level of accessibility can significantly enhance the usability of a website. The easier someone finds the experience of visiting a website, the more likely they are to become both a customer and an advocate. It will also improve the efficiency of the time people spend on a site and their ability to complete tasks such as purchasing products.

A website that is accessible for a person to use is also more accessible to search engines, and it is very likely to improve your search engine ranking.


Search engine benefits

It is an obvious fact if your website is ranked highly by the search engines, the more people will view your site. Internet users generally tend to view only the first few pages of their search results, and will try another search if they do not find what they are looking for.

Search engines rank websites by order of importance. The more important a search engine thinks a website is, the higher it will be listed. It is impossible to explain exactly how search engines rank websites, as there are over one hundred different factors that are taken into consideration.

A search engine sends a small programme onto the internet known as a spider or robot. This spider reads the content of every page of every website on the internet.

When an internet user enters key words to make a search, the search engine takes the information from the spider and lists the websites it thinks are important and relevant to what the user is searching for.

An accessible website is not only easier for people to access and navigate – search engine spiders will able to read the content of the web page much more easily.

Computers cannot understand and interpret the meaning of images, animations, movies or audio content that might commonly be found in web pages. An accessible website will provide alternative content for these. The search engine is able to understand and interpret that alternative content and will be able to decide what that website is about, and how important it is.

In the same way that language has rules of grammar and spelling, website code has its own "grammar". Using website code that is compliant to the World Wide Web Consortium standards will create a website that is clean and free from errors. As a result, it is easily read by the search engine spiders.


Legal benefits

The Disability Discrimination Act (UK) makes it unlawful for an organisation to provide a lesser service to somebody who may be impaired. A website is considered to be one of the services that is provided by the organisation.

If an organisation does not take steps to improve the accessibility of their website, they can be found in breach of the Act and may face legal proceedings as a result.

An organisation who has modified or redeveloped their website with accessibility in mind is showing that they have made reasonable adjustments to the service they are providing.


Moral benefits

Organisations who embrace website accessibility are, at the time of writing, in the minority. There is a great deal of confusion about what makes a website accessible due to misinformation and ignorance.

The internet is the largest information resource in the world, and it continues to grow exponentially. People should not be denied access to this resource simply because of an impairment and outdated website design practices.

Website accessibility, in general, is about doing the right thing.

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ORIGINAL: davidrandall

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Color-blindnesses prevents many more people from fully utilizing web sites than true disabilities, but how many designers even discuss that with their customers?

I do.

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total of approximately 48% of the UK population who could potentially have difficulty in using a website.

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approximately 48% of the UK population (who could) potentially have difficulty in using a website.

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ORIGINAL: davids

I lived in the UK for 2 years and I know that half the population is not impaired to an extent that keeps them from using websites.

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I've lived here all my life and I don't know half the population

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How many people in this group are so disabled they cannot use the internet? (The profoundly deaf and totally blind,

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That fact still doesn't detract from the point that accessibility in general is a GOOD THING and not massively hard to achieve given a little thought and decent coding.

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I, like most other visitors, will have to walk halfway across the carpark (twice) probably in the rain because the people who own the supermarket want to be politically correct.

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accessibility in general is a GOOD THING and not massively hard to achieve given a little thought and decent coding.

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No java menus, no Flash, no text embedded in images, using alt text.

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ORIGINAL: davids

Now, the harder requirement I've read here is to use strict XHTML and CSS. I have wasted many, many hours trying to design sites this way. CSS for formatting is great; CSS for layout is just not ready for prime time, IMHO. Doing some relatively simple things in CSS, like vertically centering text in a div requires this hack and that hack, and looking on yet another blog to find another hack.

If that is the cost of accessibility, then that will be an obstacle for some time to come, I'm afraid.