We’re starting the process of rebuilding and redesigning this site (E-consultancy.com) and would like to make the future version as accessible as possible. This current version isn’t bad but it certainly isn’t best practice in terms of accessibility.

Not being an expert in accessibility, I’ve been looking around various other sites that should represent best practice (e.g. W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) or RNIB or Segala or Webcredible etc.).

The reason is that I understand that ideally, fonts should all be resizable, screen readers should be able to skip to the main content of a page, and that the design should be available in different contrasts.

Assuming that the coding and design allows these things to be done, what I’m not clear on though is what is best practice in how you actually display these options (or not).

For example, do you actually need to show a font resizing option visibly on the web page or can you rely on the user knowing how to do this via the browser? Presumably if the user wants the fonts to be much bigger then you’d either have to rely on them knowing how to do this or you’d have to make this option very big and visible or they might not even see this in the first place? The same would be true of different contrast options?

I don’t know enough about how screen readers work (or how the latest browsers, or underlying HTML code work together) to know whether the ‘skip to content’ link needs to be actually shown on the page? And, if so, where should it to (presumably right near the top if you are using a screen reader?) And could it be shown as very small text (even ‘hidden’ text e.g. grey on grey) given that the user isn’t ‘seeing’ it anyway but hearing it? For normally-sighted users a big ‘skip to content’ link at the top might appear like the dreaded ‘skip intro’ link?

The different sites I’ve looked at don’t appear to have any consistent guidance on the above…? Any thoughts from the experts out there?

Thanks

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com

Great. Thanks Trenton - seems to make eminent sense. I was amazed to see that giant 'Skip to Content' button magically appear on your site when I tabbed... ;)

Ashley

One advantage of using relative font sizes is that the users who have pre-set their browsers to display fonts at a larger size do not have to to anything when they arrive at the site. For example, a user that has chosen the 'larger' text size in IE7 under the Page>Text Size menu will always see text at an increased size on sites with relative text sizes, as the setting persists even if the browser restarts. To my knowledge it is possible to have on-screen controls without using relative text sizes (I am open to correction on this), and this would mean users that do pre-set IE7 would have to take an extra click to regain control.

Perhaps the best solution is to implement both systems - use relative font sizes and also provide on-screen controls.

Mark Crowley

There is an argument that skip links should be visible anyway. Currently I am doing the same as Trenton and providing skip links that are fully accessible by screen reader software but only visible on screen when tabbed to. To me this is more of a usability issue, and I think in future it will become an adopted convention (I'm not putting my money on which way it will go), in the same way that the > symbol has become a convention for breadcrumbs, or the trolley icon has become a convention for shopping basket (which has suddenly struck me as a bit wierd that a trolley should be the metaphor for a basket. Wierd, but of course not unusual in this strange world we live in).

Richard Morton

http://www.qm-consulting.co.uk/