Home > Accessible Web Services > Why Be Accessible : Technical Reasons
Technical Reasons for Accessibility
There are compelling technical reasons for making a website accessible and Standards Compliant. A website designed to be accessible to a screen reader can also be accessible to a PDA or a mobile phone,
the processes involved are the same.
Standards Compliance means your website is forward compatible
You’re probably reading this page on a computer screen, a PC or Macintosh. But that is only one possible output. Mobile Phones and PDA’s can access the web, so can Web TV. The content can be viewed on screen, printed or read aloud. It can be read by other machines (machine reading) or converted into Braille (embossed Braille).
And that happens today. What can we say about the devices of tomorrow?
Well we can say this – They will be Standards Compliant. That means
they will be designed to work with code that conforms to W3C Standards.
If your site is not Standards Compliant then you are restricting your potential
audience.
It’s no longer just about making your 'web' page look good. It’s about delivering your message, your content, across a variety of media. The same processes that make your site accessible to disabled users, will make it accessible to a far wider and diverse audience.
The standards do not exist in isolation
The W3C set standards for all new internet technologies. These technologies are often intended to work together. If your website doesn't follow the basic XHTML and CSS rules then integrating with other current, and future, technologies could be an issue.
The longer you wait...
Websites grow. Sometimes they grow very rapidly. A relatively easy transformation to Accessibility and Standards Compliance today, could be far more complex in a years time when your site is even larger. Every non-accessible element you add to your site, is an element that needs to be re-worked.
