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Accessibility and standards compliance

Sitekit is committed to helping our clients produce standards compliant, accessible sites.

With over two decades of experience Sitekit has developed considerable expertise in helping organisations reach the highest level of web accessibility and standards compliance.

The need for accessibility

Many people have difficulty using the internet because a high proportion of websites have been built without taking into account the wide range of abilities of the users – those who are new to the internet, or have physical difficulties in manipulating a mouse, for example. Your audience needs your website to be accessible – whether you are trying to sell products to customers or provide information to your community.

Good accessibility is an invisible attribute – if any user can find their way to, and interact with, a website easily, the site is truly accessible. By contrast, a website that is inaccessible to the user is immediately noticeable, and will be extremely frustrating.

Sitekit CMS can easily help your site meet the following accessibility requirements:

• Scalable website text for those with eyesight difficulties
• High resolution text-only version
• Interactive features can be accessed both by mouse and accessibility keys
• Features and text accessible by screen reader software
• Features work across all access methods (e.g. PCs, Apple MACs and PDAs)
• Avoid 'heavy' pages that take a long time to download for people with limited bandwidth
• Prevent visual clutter on the screen that makes it difficult for people to distinguish the content

Benefits of a fully accessibility website include:

• Your site is available on any browser, device and connection to anyone
• Reduces the probability of litigation under the Disability Discrimination Act (1995)
• Search engines favour spider accessible sites
• Compliance with existing standards
• Easier adoption of new compliance standards as they are introduced

Sitekit believes that the adoption of standards is paramount to the future of the Internet

In the UK, the Department of Trade & Industry (www.dti.gov.uk) and the office of the e-Government Unit (www.e-government.cabinetoffice.gov.uk) are co-ordinating the development of industry standards for web accessibility. They released recommendations for best practice in the structure and design of websites.

Since the Disability Discrimination Act came into force in September 2004, public sector websites face prosecution for failure to meet basic accessibility standards. Private sector legislation is set to follow.

On a global level, common technical standards for web accessibility are being agreed and developed by the group that controls the architecture of the world wide web, W3C (www.w3.org), and the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Specialist bodies such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) and the Disability Rights Commission are lobbying government to encourage and legislate for web accessibility standards for people with special needs.

Sitekit CMS has been developed to enable one-click compliance to guidelines set down by governments and governing bodies addressing issues such as interoperability and accessibility.

Sitekit CMS can implement standards for your entire website with a single action, without the need for scripting or HTML expertise.

Benefits of complying with standards

• Reduces the possibility of alienating your existing audience
• Extends the scope of your potential audience
• Improved public perception of your organisation
• Reduces the probability of litigation under the Disability Discrimination Act (1995)
• Increases personal protection for directors and managers in the event of discrimination litigation
• Easier adoption of new compliance standards as they are introduced

Sitekit CMS meets the required standards

International standards:

• WCAG: W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• US Section 508 Guidelines (to Bobby AA and AAA standards)

UK Standards:

• UK Disability Discrimination Act (1995)
• UK e-Gov & e-GMS standards
• UK Freedom of Information Act
• Dublin Core Metadata