Costs of fixing an inaccessible website
September 2008
Unfortunately, there is no magic wand which can fix an inaccessible website - prevention is often better than cure.
The most effective way to create a usable website, is to make it accessible from the outset to avoid time consuming, costly alterations in the future.
Web accessibility must start at the design stage, where the web developer translates templates into HTML and CSS code. Accessibility in web design cannot always be achieved by a few small tweaks - designing a truly accessible website requires intrinsic knowledge of web accessibility and how different disabled users access the web.
Website design lifecycle
Each web design project has its own life cycle, with different phases which are all interconnected. To fix an inaccessible website, changes must be applied into some or all of the phases, so changing even one simple element can be time consuming and costly as it has a knock-on effect on some or all of the other stages.
First steps
If you want an accessible website, a good starting point is to consider who will be using it. This will help to define the users of the site and their requirements.
You will need to define detailed profiles of specific users to ensure that all needs of disabled users are accounted for. You should build a user profile for each type of user, a schedule of their day and with the typical journey they will take when using your site. This will help you to consider users with a range of different physical and mental disabilities and define their online needs.
When these profiles have been compiled, you may decide to get rid of inaccessible content from your site, or to make it more accessible, for instance by redesigning the navigation structure to make it more intuitive for disabled users. These changes can be costly, so it is well worth tackling accessibility before building a site. You should also consider whether the Content Management System (CMS) you will be using has been designed with accessibility in mind, and whether the web designer has the skills to produce accessible content.
A visual design that can be translated into accessible templates
Once you've pinpointed your users, it's time to start shaping the look and feel of the site. If a website has not been visually created with accessibility in mind, this means that new mock-ups and new HTML templates might need to be recreated.
Other things to consider for a sustainable website
- What is your colour scheme? Colours are crucial to colour blind or dyslexic users, and those with vision impairment. A wrong colour choice can have a knock on effect on the colours used elsewhere in the website.
- Are you using graphics in menus? It is best to avoid this. Use text instead so that the font can be resized for people with low vision (images do not resize well).
- Is there room for growth? You will need to give your website enough flexibility for it to develop.
- Tables or CSS? Do not use tables for layout purposes - this would require recoding from scratch. Accessible websites should be coded with CSS.
Do you have accessibility problems?
Sometimes it can be easier and quicker to recode a website from scratch, even if only a few adjustments appear to be necessary. Fixing these coding issues can be complex and time consuming.
If your website was created using a CMS, integration of the new HTML and CSS templates will need to be redone, which can also be costly. Understanding the cost implications of fixing an inaccessible website is the best way for website commissioners to ensure that they are avoided in the future.
