Accessibility

Disability rights thus form an integral axis of our approach – including our website design. Building an accessible website calls for special care so that images, links, and navigation are easy for all to use.

In real terms, this means that disabled users – for instance, visually impaired people, or those relying on keyboard navigation, unable to use a mouse and due to conditions like cerebral palsy – are as able to access the site as other users who are not similarly disabled.

Access to information and communications technologies, including the Web, is defined as a basic human right in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, location, or ability. When the Web meets this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability. Thus the impact of disability is radically changed on the Web because the Web removes barriers to communication and interaction that many people face in the physical world. However, when websites, applications, technologies, or tools are badly designed, they can create barriers that exclude people from using the Web. (Source)

A UN-commissioned survey that looked at 100 widely-used websites from 20 countries revealed that 93% of these websites failed to meet minimum accessibility standards for people with disabilities. Some problems have easy remedies – but programming code standards that lay the framework for accessibility were largely ignored (JavaScript, to give just one example of many, does not work with some screen readers – yet it was relied on heavily).
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