Web Accessibility

As a web developer and standards evangelist accessibility is foremost on my mind. The question “Why is accessibly so important? It looks great in Internet Explorer.” If I could reach through my monitor and slap these people I would. But I regress.

One of the problems when people think about ‘accessibility’ is the idea that we are catering to handicapped users. Negativity was associated with the term “accessible” in the late 80’s and early 90’s when legislation was passed to increase accessibility to handicapped people. Businesses were forced to put out money by installing ramps and elevators. Businesses don’t like putting out money.

Fast-forward ten years to the moment of accessibility on the internet. It’s no surprise that it’s meeting resistance. First, it’s the simple fact that it’s change, people don’t like change. Secondly, accessible has a negative stigma.

Accessibility has little to do with handicapped people. The whole point of accessibility is creating a website which allows anyone to read your website. This includes past, present and future means of gathering information. Notice I didn’t mention anything about viewing your website.

In my humble opinion, browsing as we know it is going to be radically different in 10 to 15 years. It will get to a point where we will not know the difference between our computer and the internet. But this discussion is for another post.