Access for Everyone
Accessibility is concerned with the goal to facilitate handicapped individuals in accessing information provided on the web, as well as allowing them to use software in a barrier-free way. Handicapped individuals often utilize special devices in order to adjust content and navigation to their personal needs. Visually impaired individuals, for example, need to increase font sizes or have content read out by special speech browsers. If your website does not support such additions, it will fail to reach this target group.
Broader Audience
In the web area, accessibility does not only concern handicapped individuals but also those who don always utilize the most common browsers (which is basically Internet Explorer). Numerous sites are not functional if they are viewed through Mozilla (Netscape), Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and so forth. Depending on the target group, this means up to 5 to 30 percent of visitors will not be able to use or view your internet offerings. Needless to say such disappointment for the individual will affect the general perception of the brand at large. Therefore, accessibility must be estimated as an important economic aspect in the development of a product.
Investment guaranty
Another advantage of a barrier-free website is a certain investment guarantee., as recently the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides set guidelines that influence the development of future generation of browsers. If a website considers these guidelines, the number of changes to adjust the site to a new browser generation in future is then minimal. In addition to this the Federal Government of Germany imposes a pre-requisite on software and websites developed for use in civil service, and as such IT products have to be barrier-free.
Implementation
Accessibility is easily implemented at minimal cost - presuming that web developers implement accessibility guidelines early on and throughout the production process. Through our expert knowledge we will ensure that your website is barrier-free.
We achieve this in two ways: Firstly, we will provide precise guidelines and suggestions for your web agency or development department. Secondly, we will evaluate design concepts and provide proposals in when considering the optimization of accessibility.
In regard to software, accessibility issues tend to be less generalized than with the web. Attaining accessibility here is very much dependent on the operating system and the type of application in question. We are looking forward to answering your individual question per email.
|
 |
