Powerful Web Solutions

There some very good business reasons, as well as legal ones for making your website accessible. An accessible website can help bring more visitors to your site and, in the long term, save you money.

Recently the issue of making websites more accessible for disabled users has been getting lots of publicity, much of it about the legal requirements on site owners. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 requires that any site offering “goods, services or other facilities” must “make reasonable adjustments” to ensure that the site is accessible for disabled users. So there is a legal requirement for your website to be accessible.

More information on the Disabilities Discrimination Act >

If you are unsure whether your website complies with all the recent legislation including Terms & Conditions, Accessibility (Disability Discrimination Act), Data Protection, Privacy & Direct Marketing, Consumer Credit and Company Law, then why not get in touch.

You can’t afford to exclude any customers

Some Government estimates suggest there are 8.5 million people in the UK with some form of disability, and these people have a combined spending power of £45 billion. Whilst they’re not all going to visit your website just because it’s accessible, it’s a huge number of people who could be excluded from using your site if it’s not.

Easy for search engines too!

By adding accessibility features such as extra text content to supplement images, animations and sound, you’re making information easier for search engines to index. This can help improve your search engine ranking.

Accessible doesn’t have to mean boring

Being accessible to both disabled and non-disabled visitors doesn’t mean a site can’t be visually stunning and fully functional.

Easy for the disabled, is easy for everyone

The same techniques used to make a site accessible, also improve how easy it is for everyone to use your site.

Don’t forget the dial-up audience is still there

Although broadband is getting a grip in the UK, the dial-up is still the majority especially with home users. Improving accessibility will also improve the download times for your pages and download speed is still a very important consideration in making your website user-friendly.

Easier to maintain and develop in the future

A properly built, standards compliant, accessible site will be easier to maintain and develop in the future. With the increasing range of devices used to access the web, such as web enabled TVs and mobile phones, it is important to make your site flexible enough to be viewed on a variety of systems.