Access for Everyone
Accessibility is concerned with the ambition to facilitate handicapped persons access to information provided on the web and to allow them to use software in a barrier-free way. Even if stated differently, this is the case for least of the current web offerings. Handicapped people often utilise special devices in order to adjust contents and navigation to their needs. Visually impaired persons, for example, need to increase font sizes or have contents read out by special speech browsers. If your website does not support such additives, it will fail to reach this target group.
Broader Audience
In the web area, accessibility does not only concern handicapped people but also those who utilise others than the most common browsers (which is merely Internet Explorer). Numerous sites are not usable if they are viewed using Mozilla (Netscape), Opera, Safari, Konqueror, or others. Depending on the target group, this makes a number of 5 up to 30 per cent of visitors who will not be able to use your internet offerings. Needless to say that such disappointment will affect the brand perception. Therefore, accessibility includes an important economic aspect.
Investment guaranty
Another advantage of a barrier-free website is a certain investment guaranty as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides guidelines that influence the development of future browser generations. If a website accounts for these guidelines, the number of changes to adjust the site to a new browser generation is kept on a minimum. Also, the Federal Government of Germany makes demands on software and websites: If developed for the civil service, IT products have to be barrier-free.
Implementation
Accessibility is implemented easily and without high costs - presuming that web developers employ accessibility guidelines early and consequentially in the production process.
By our expert knowledge we will ensure that your website is barrier-free. We do this in two ways: Firstly, we will provide guidelines and precise suggestions to your web agency or development department. Secondly, we will evaluate design concepts with regard to accessibility and provide proposals to optimise them.
With regard to software, accessibility issues are less general than in the web area. Here, attaining accessibility is highly dependent on the operating system and the type of application in question. We are looking forward to answer your individual question per email.
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