Setting Standards

Web standards and accessibility is a very important topic in my opinion. Web standards refers to a set of standards put in place by the WSC further information can be found on webstandards.org.

It mainly refers to how code used in web pages should be written. I would have never understood the importance of this until we started using code in class and furthermore we were shown a firsthand example of a blind person using the web. She was a lecturer from are college and show us how she used a programme called JAWS to surf the web. So many factors were at play that decided if her browsing was going to be an easy process or a torture! Anti-virus software, the speed of the internet and of course the code it’s self to name a few. Heres a quick example I found on YouTube.

         


It is not only blind people that have accessibility issues on the web, its people of all disability types including deaf people. What I don’t understand is how the WSC could please everyone. So I did a bit of research and I can see that of course they can’t. What they can do is provide the greatest benefit for the largest number of visitors that they can. They also consider other elements such as does this help in the long term or just short term and does the help provided work on different types of browsers software and devices ( such as mobile phones ).

So I’m studying marketing and although I think it’s quite clear these standards are important from a human rights and equality perspective I can also see that it is valuable to return on investment within business. The name of the game for business is reaching a larger target audience and making your website more accessible can do just that.

Reach for your customers