I was first introduced to HTML around 1995 or ’96 through some tutorial types of courses offered by America Online. Tables were used for layout and the font tag was applied liberally. Although CSS got an occasional nod, the topic of accessibility was almost completely ignored. If anyone dared ask about it, they were told that it was very complex, unsupported by browsers and in short, not worth messing with. My, how we’ve changed.

Andy Hagans has pointed out that accessibility is an important factor in findability. If a person who is physically challenged in some way can’t make sense of a website and find what they need, chances are that a search engine would not be able to, either.

The accessibility standards are presented in priorities:

Priority 1 checkpoints. These must be followed or one or more groups will find it impossible to access information on your site.

Priority 2 checkpoints. These should be followed or one or more groups will find it difficult to access your information.

Priority 3 checkpoints. These may be followed to improve access for one or more groups.

To be honest, the accessibility standards still seem complex – or at least, lengthy. However, with increasing browser support for the standards, it behooves us as web developers to roll up our sleeves and get a bit dirty as we figure out how to apply these standards to our sites.

Reference: W3C: Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0