Accessibility Glossary

Accessibility: is about the ability for any person, in any circumstance, using any device to access content on the web, including people with disabilities.

Accessibility Audit: is an in-depth evaluation of a website’s design and technical implementation against web accessibility guidelines (e.g. WCAG 2.0) and other guiding principles.

Accessibility Evaluation: is an in-depth evaluation of a website’s design and technical implementation with users with disabilities performing representative tasks, designed to elicit feedback about the site and highlight any issues which may prevent people from using the site.

Alt Text: is used as a replacement for an image, whenever the image cannot be seen. Every visible image should have alt text, unless the image ispurely decorative, that is, it has no function and is used only for visual formatting or decoration.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colours, spacing) to Web documents. It is used to describe the presentation (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written for the web. CSS separates design from content, consequently making content more accessible.

Disability Discrimination Act (DDA): is a piece of legislation that promotes civil rights for disabled people and protects disabled people from discrimination. Implemented in the UK in 1995 (in Australia in 1992), it was updated again in 2005.

Screen Magnifier: is software used by people with vision impairments, which makes onscreen images and text larger so that they can be more easily seen.

Screen Reader: issoftware used by people with vision impairments to access online content. It interprets web pages and relays their content back to users in an audio format.

User Agent: is the application that a person uses to access the web, it ranges from web browsers, to email clients, to mobile phones and screen readers.

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): is an initiative started by the W3C in an effort to improve the accessibility of the Web for people with disabilities.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): are a series of guidelines published by WAI on making online content more accessible. These are primarily for users with disabilities, but also cover browsers and some mobile content. WCAG is currently on the 2.0 version.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): is an international consortium who work together to develop standards for the web. Their mission is - To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

8 Quick Accessibility Tips

  1. Images:Use thealtattribute to include a meaningful text alternative for each image.
  2. Colour: Ensure that there is sufficient contrast between text and its background colour. Use a Colour Contrast Analyser to determine this. Download from
  3. Resizable text: Ensure that text is of a good size and can easily be resized in all browsers.
  4. Multimedia:Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
  5. Hypertext links: Use descriptive link text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid ‘click here’.
  6. Page organization:Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. UseCSSfor layout and style where possible.
  7. Page titles: Describe each page through the page title.
  8. Check your work: Use different browsers, screen resolutions, and operating systems. Check as many alternatives as possible, and ask others to do the same for you.

Some Accessibility Statistics

  • 39 million people with disabilities living in Europe [Source: Open University, September 2009].
  • There are 10 million disabled people in the UK with a combined spending power in excess of 120 billion (Source: AbilityNet)
  • 4% of the UKpopulation has a sight problem (Source: RNIB).
  • Every day another 100 people start to lose their sight. This figure is based on the average number of people each day who registered as severely sight impaired or sight impaired[Source:
  • 9% of the UK population (one in 12 men and one in 200 women) have some form of colour blindness (Source: IEE).
  • 16% of the UKpopulation suffers from some form of hearing loss [Source: Office of the e-Envoy].
  • About 2% of the population in the UK have learning disabilities[Source:
  • 10% of the UK population is thought to have dyslexia to some degree [Source:
  • 13% of the population have literacy problems [Source: Office of the e-Envoy].
  • 21% of the UK population are aged 60 or over [Source: Government census].

UK Law

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (the DDA), was introduced with the intention of comprehensively tackling the discrimination which many disabled people face. The main part of the DDA that applies to websites and requires them to be accessible came into force on 1 October 1999. Further changes were made to the Act in 2005 which required certain employers and service providers previously exempt from the Act (such as the police and small employers) to comply with the Act and therefore make their websites accessible. Changes to the Act in 2005 also brought in a duty on public authorities to promote disability equality.

Accessibility Resources

AbilityNet

DirectGov information on disability

PAS 78

Royal National Institute of Blind people (RNIB)

The Christopher and Dana Reeve foundation

The Disability Rights Commission

The Government's Disability site

WCAG Guidelines

Web Access Initiative (WAI)

WebAim

Foviance’s Accessibility Services

Accessibility is about the ability for any person, in any circumstance, using any device to access content on the web, including people with disabilities and is of increasing concern to organisations for financial, moral and legal reasons.

Accessibility guidelines are a key aspect of accessibility and a review against these can be a great starting point to making your website accessible. However, following guidelines doesn’t always mean that you are producing websites that are easy and enjoyable for people with disabilities to use. For a truly accessible website you need to combine technical compliance with user testing to create an accessible user experience as well.

Foviance offers a full range of services to help meet your legal and business objectives for accessibility, to ensure that you are producing websites that people with disabilities can use successfully and to transfer knowledge about accessibility to your teams.

This includes Accessibility Audits, Accessibility Testing and Accessibility Training.

Accessibility Audit

Foviance’s Accessibility Audit provides an in-depth evaluation of a website’s design and technical implementation against web accessibility guidelines (e.g. WCAG 2.0) and other guiding principles.

It identifies and categorises issues that makes web-based information and applications inaccessible to a wide range of people with disabilities, including those with visual, hearing, motor and reading impairments or difficulties.

Foviance’s website Accessibility Audit:

  • Benchmarks a websites performance against web accessibility guidelines.
  • Identifies areas of a website that contravenes accessibility guidelines and other areas of best practice.
  • Provides business focused recommendations and solutions of how accessibility issues can be resolved and prioritised.

Accessibility Testing

Foviance’s Accessibility Testing can be carried out with a wide-range of users with disabilities.Testing with usersidentifies key areas of difficulty and confusion with a websites content, structure, design and interactive features and provides actionable recommendations to improve the online experience for people with disabilities without hindering usability for everyone else.

Foviance pioneers an integrated approach to accessibility that follows the same principles as our usability evaluations. This allows our clients to incorporate accessibility within their online customer experience strategy, rather than treat it as a separate add-on that can compromise success.

Testing is either carried out in our London-based usability labs, or if there are technical constraints with users’ assistive technology set-up, the testing can be carried out in their home, office or other location.

We provide three key deliverables:

  • Accessibility Report - detailed document outlining our methodology, results and their interpretation plus actionable recommendations.
  • Video highlights - edited video clips of the most informative parts of the tests.
  • Presentation - an oral presentation communicating the most important findings and recommendations.

Accessibility Training

Foviance’s Accessibility Training provides developers, designers and content editors with the knowledge and skills necessary for iterative implementation of accessible websites and applications and knowledge of how best practice can transform the online experience for people with disabilities.

Training can be carried out at Foviance’s office or in-house and typically includes:

  • An introduction to accessibility, including the legal, moral and business reasons.
  • Demonstrations of how people with disabilities access the web.
  • Key accessibility guidelines and standards (WCAG 1.0, 2.0, PAS78).
  • Examples of common accessibility issues in HTML, Flash, audio, video, Web 2.0.
  • Best practice tips and techniques on accessible design and implementations.
  • Web evaluation tools to help test for accessibility.
  • The importance and value in involving users with disabilities in web accessibility testing.