The worldwide web has opened up information access to everyone - or has it? If you're visually impaired, you're likely to encounter major stumbling blocks on your way to the information superhighway. Recent legislation could mean that disabled users get a better deal from the web - and as a result, organisations in the US and Australia have already come under legal pressure to make their websites more accessible to all.

UK organisations too could face legal challenges over website accessibility. But the good news is that improving basic site accessibility isn't a major undertaking, and could make your site easier for able-bodied as well as disabled visitors to use.

Though the internet may appear to be primarily a visual medium, blind users can still surf the web using automatic readers that convert onscreen text to synthesised speech, or a refreshable Braille display.

Automatic readers, however, can't make sense of the flashy graphics and animations that adorn many of today's websites. And if you can't see well or make fine hand movements, using a mouse to click on that vital web link is well nigh impossible.

Fighting back

Disabled users are starting to fight back. In 2000, the organisers of the Sydney Olympics were fined $20,000 by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission after failing to comply with an order to make their site more accessible to blind users.

In November 1999, the US National Federation of the Blind took America Online to court, claiming that AOL's web software was in breach of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The following July AOL agreed to modify its software to make it more accessible for blind users.

Could it happen here? The UK equivalent of the Americans with Disabilities Act is the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, which came into force in late 1999 and requires service providers to take 'reasonable steps' to make their services accessible to disabled people. So far, no website provider has fallen foul of the Act - and it remains to be seen whether anyone will.

'Frankly, it's not absolutely clear-cut whether the DDA requires websites to be accessible for disabled users,' says Rupert Battcock, a senior IT lawyer with law firm Nabarro Nathanson.

But Alison Welterveden, a partner in the IT and e-commerce group at Tite & Lewis, disagrees.

'It's only a matter of time before we see actions here in the UK,' she says. 'I don't see why you wouldn't take the Act to cover the web - its purpose is to ensure that those who provide services don't discriminate against the disabled, and it would really go against public policy for it to be construed in any other way.'

Recent research by the Royal National Institute for the Blind indicates that many commercial websites could currently fall foul of the DDA. For its report Get the Message Online, published in September 2000, RNIB tested the websites of 17 high street retailers and service providers against a five-point accessibility checklist. None of the websites tested met all the criteria, and some didn't meet any at all.

Retailer Tesco was one of the first companies to react to the RNIB's campaign. The company launched its new accessible website, developed in collaboration with the RNIB, in May last year.

Commercial sense

Making your website easy for disabled visitors to use makes commercial as well as legal sense. There are around 8.7m disabled people in the UK alone, with a combined spending power of about £50bn.

Most of the changes that help disabled users can also make it easier for able-bodied customers to use the site. Tesco points out that its site also works well for customers using internet set-top boxes and hand-held computers, and using a slow mobile phone connection - thereby broadening its potential customer base.

Heavy use of graphics and confusing page structure are two of the biggest problems for text readers used by the blind. A clear, simple structure with more text than graphics, careful use of colour, and using Alternate tags to label all relevant graphic material (see 'Could do better,' right) will go a long way towards improving disabled access - as well as complying with usability advice from gurus such as Jakob Nielsen, whose book Designing Web Usability is subtitled 'The Practice of Simplicity'.

But the good news is that any steps you take towards a more accessible site will put you ahead of the game. According to Alex Frewin of design consultancy Corporate Edge, the most common mistake web designers make regarding site accessibility is simply 'not trying at all'.

COULD DO BETTER

There's always room for improvement. The following tips could help make your website more accessible:

1. Images: use meaningful alternate (alt) tags to describe visual images and animations

2. Multimedia: provide captions and transcripts for audio clips, and descriptions of video

3. Links: ensure they make sense when read out of context

4. Page organisation: use headings, lists, and a consistent structure.

5. Colour: use sparingly, bearing colour-blind readers in mind

6. Frames: avoid them - they're hard for text readers to navigate

7. Navigation: provide keyboard shortcuts

8. Tables: ensure they make sense read line by line - and provide a summary

9. Check your work: use checklists 

10. Test the site on real people

For more information on website usability see 'Style or Substance?' Accountancy, February, pp50,51.