Accessibility: does your site measure up?
Does your existing web site comply with the law? Are you putting barriers in the way of some of your visitors? Ask red badge to audit your site and let you know how you measure up. The Disability Discrimination Act applies to web sites just in the same way as it applies to any service being offered to the public, whether or not the service is one that is charged for - and because of the way the web is designed to work, there's no excuse not to have an accessible web site.
An Accessibility Audit will show you where your site is getting it right; where your site is failing to meet the standard; and lay out the changes required to make the grade. A report in plain English, backed by technical detail, will let you know where you stand now, where you need to get to, and what changes you need to make to get there. Contact red badge now.
Web standards: does your site come up to scratch?
There are hundreds of different browsers in use - and a web page viewed in one can look very different from the same page viewed in another. Even different versions of Internet Explorer for Windows will present the same page in different ways, to say nothing of Internet Explorer on the Macintosh, or the myriad of other browsers your visitors could be using. So what can you do to make your web page look the same to every visitor? Nothing. But you can make sure that the informational content of your site gets to everyone.
Some web pages fail to work at all in some browsers because they have been designed using non-standard code to cope with (or make use of) bugs in one particular browser. Many others have just been carelessly written, and may fail in unpredictable ways in current (and future) browsers. By making sure the site complies with existing standards, you ensure that it will work (in the sense of delivering the content) in any browser, without having to compromise on visual design.
You can test your site's (or indeed any site's) compliance with standards using the World Wide Web Consortium's automated online validator. As part of the accessibility audit process, you will also get a report on the standards compliance of your site.
"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
red badge: helping you make the grade
