Web Site Accessibility

Here at Just Search Ltd, we design accessible web sites. The Government passed the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, which imposes that companies that employ 15 or more employees must make changes that are practical. The second part of the act came into force on October 1st, 2004 and applied to companies with 15 or fewer employees. We all have responsibility, to our employees and our customers, to enable access to our work spaces and our products and services.

Section III of the DDA came into force on October 1st, 1999. This section refers to the accessibility of websites. It refers to the goods, facilities, services and premises of our companies and draws a conclusion that if we have a business that offers goods, facilities and services on the Internet, then that website falls within the remit of the act. So in terms of accessibility, a high percentage of websites have been breaking the law for several years.

Website accessibility – is it straight forward?

No. We are a beautiful, diverse species; there are so many different people to think of. Website accessibility is a complex subject, owing to the media in which we work. Not every browser can use a mouse or even see your website and some people have difficulties with colours (see below for further details). Then there is the aspect of getting all this navigation to work.

Trichromat, regular vision, using all three colour pigments (red/green/blue).

Anomalous Trichromat, people with anomalous trichromatic vision use all three color receptors but reception of one pigment is misaligned. protanomaly: reduced red sensitivity. deuteranomaly: reduced green sensitivity. tritanomaly: reduced blue sensitivity.

Dichromat, people with dichromatic vision use only 2 of the 3 visual pigments – red, green or blue is missing. protanopia: unable to receive red. deuteranopia: unable to receive green. tritanopia: unable to receive blue.

Monochromat (Achromatopsia), people with monochromatic vision can only see one color, so their vision contains no ‘color’. typical monochromatic: unable to combine colors. fully grayscale. also known as rod monochromat. atypical monochromatic: very low color recognition. also known as cone monochromat.