Web Accessibility Initiative

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities.

For information about the WAI and the international standards that it develops, please visit the WAI website.

"The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." (Tim Berners-Lee, W3C director and inventor of the World Wide Web)

Accessibility and Search Engine Optimisation

Avec Solutions recommends that its clients seek to make their websites accessible to the widest possible audience, including those ‘browsing’ the web using alternative technologies such as those used by people with various disabilities (e.g. large-print or audio browsers for those with visual impairments) as well as internet-enabled mobile phones, PDAs, and so forth. This recommendation is a point of principle, though it also meets the requirements of the UK Disability Discrimination Act and similar legislation throughout the world.

The best way of ensuring this is to comply as far as possible with the guidelines of the Web Accessibility Initiative (see right), which includes such things as using only structural/semantic elements in HTML code and separating out all design features into Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files, as well as ensuring that alternate text is available for all graphical elements.

As search engines like Google will ‘read’ the website in much the same way as a special browser for the visually impaired would, search engine optimisation is also directly related to making the website accessible at the design level.