Web Standards
How Can I Make my Website Accessible?
The best way to build an accessible website is with web standards compliant HTML and CSS. HTML forms the basis by structuring the content, and CSS takes care of the presentation. When used the right way, your website becomes faster, more cross-compatible, and more accessible.
Who Made these Web Standards?
Web standards are the creation of W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). They are an independent body with many members from the international web community. Their work covers a wide range of web technologies and their aim is to lead the Web to its full potential.
Visit the W3C website for more information... >>
Why Use Web Standards?
You won't need different versions of the website to suit other browsers. Following web standards ensures pages work just as well on Internet Explorer as they do on Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Safari (Mac). Out of this also comes forward-compatibility. Web pages are more likely to continue working properly on future versions of browsers, as these become more and more supportive of web standards. Good web standard pages are easier to access by users with disabilities, opening up a wider market and helping to comply with anti-discrimination laws.
Irish Web Standards for Accessibility
In Ireland accessibility standards are
set out by the National Disability Authority (NDA) who developed the AccessIT guidelines to provide comprehensive information on making web services accessible to people with disabilities.
Visit the AccessIT site for more information... >>
The Effect of Web Standards on Page Ranking
Another advantage of following web standards is that search engines like Google will give your website a higher page ranking in their search results.
They now pay more attention to the structure and content of a web page than they do to keywords and other meta data. This came about after frequent misuse by developers leading to unreliable results when using these search engines to find information on the Web.