For the third-largest minority group in the United States — more than 40 million people — the vast majority of Websites are partially or completely inaccessible.
The idea of a Website that excludes African-Americans or Latinos is all but unthinkable, yet Americans with disabilities are constantly faced with Websites that don’t take their needs into account. Fortunately, many of the world’s most popular Websites — among them Yahoo!, Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia — are working to become accessible to disabled users, but there are many, many more sites out there that still have a long way to go.
We all know that no one intentionally sets out to create an inaccessible Website. After all, the point of having a Website is to reach people — and most Web designers would do anything to reach 40 million of them. But for many designers and developers, the idea of creating an accessible Website is incredibly overwhelming, or even stifling.
“Developers think, ‘I can’t use the cool, new technologies because they’re not accessible,’ rather than looking at these technologies and making them accessible. So it’s like people don’t see an accessible interface as an opportunity to make a cooler interface, but as something that is dumbing down what you really want to do.”
The fact is, accessibility isn’t at odds with performance or attractiveness at all. An accessible Website is a well-designed Website — one that far more people than the disabled can enjoy. Websites designed with accessibility in mind also work better with dial-up connections and hand-held devices such as BlackBerries and iPhones — and as an added bonus, they’re usually also better indexed by search engines like Google.
It’s worth noting that there may even be negative consequences of ignoring accessibility. On August 27 of this year, Target paid out more than $6 million as part of a class-action lawsuit filed by Bruce F. Sexton, Jr. and the National Federation for the Blind. The retail heavyweight’s Website was inaccessible to blind users, and the court ruled that this violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Naturally, it’s the wrong attitude to feel strong-armed into designing an accessible Website out of fear of being sued. The lesson to be taken from the lawsuit is that Target lost a lot more than just $6 million: It also lost millions of potential customers, not to mention the respect of a lot of people, abled and disabled alike.
The right attitude is to approach Web design — particularly with the goal of accessibility — with an open mind and a passion for originality. It’s also important to remember that setting boundaries can sometimes force you to be more innovative.
