DESIGN FOR SUCCESS | WEBSITE DESIGN | GRAPHIC DESIGN | PRINT
You may well have heard the term “accessible website” being banded about in recent times, but to many this is just another piece of jargon that means very little. So what exactly is an 'accessible' website, and what does it mean to you and your business?
The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) is a piece of legislation which exists to ensure that disabled people get equal rights and opportunities, and is responsible for controlling our industry, along with many others, to make sure that we're doing things right – in other words, all websites must be built to current DDA standards. In a nutshell, this gives internet access to people with such disabilities as impaired sight.
Quite simply, this means that from April 2006 all UK websites should comply with this law, meaning they have to be built correctly from the ground up. It's great to think that we're taking an active step in breaking down some of the barriers the disabled community have faced for long enough, but there's another good reason for making your website completely accessible – search engines love it! If you want great organic search results, this can work wonders. Obviously, as with all search engine optimisation, there's no cast iron guarantee – but in many cases, website accessibility combined with the correct copy has achieved fantastic results.
It's quite simple to find out whether or not your website complies with current DDA legislation by having a simple test run on it. Most companies won't charge you for this, but if you’re having trouble we will be happy to run the test for you free of charge.
If your site fails when the test is run, don't despair. We can give you a thorough report and a competitive estimate for putting things right. You're not tied to Freebird to carry this work out for you, but historically we are able to offer a package which is streets ahead of our competitors. The choice, of course, is yours – but with our free testing, at least you'll know where you stand.
Whilst it is a requirement by law that your website design meets DDA standards as of 1st April 2006, there are other benefits to website accessibility too. Freebird fully supports equality for disabled people, which is why we have been building and designing our websites to be completely accessible even before the introduction of regulations. Apart from the obvious appeal of ensuring your products or services are readily available to anyone with a disability, you can bask in the knowledge that search engines will love it. Many of our clients have enjoyed excellent organic results obtained purely from a correctly built, accessible website design. So while there are no guarantees, you'll stand a great chance of obtaining the search results you're looking for, which could potentially save you a small fortune on 'pay per click' campaigns.