The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an initiative set-out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to develop strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.
Web accessibility means that visitors with disabilities can still access the web. This includes navigating, understanding, and interpreting the information available. Ensuring website are accessible to all is vital as around 10% of people in the UK have some sort of disability.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
The WCAG explain
Introduction
All the features of the World Wide Web that make it appealing to nondisabled persons – the enormous range of information, the unfiltered opinions published by average people, the self-serve shopping, and more – also make the Web appealing to people with disabilities. However, statistics show that disabled people have a lower Web usage than people without disabilities. Volunteer administrators can increase disabled people’s participation in their organizations’ Web sites by “authoring” – that is, coding, writing, designing,
Always feel a certain degree of skepticism when it comes to the concept of universality in Web design. My intuition and usability experience tell me, that a good universal solution does not really exist.
Any universal Web site, intended for use by both able and disabled people, can be easily improved, if we optimize it specifically for each target audience. On the other hand, we designers don't usually consider what is best and optimal for the disabled audience. Frequently, disabled people are just out of the picture when it comes to design and any
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