In the UK The Disability Discrimination Act says that web sites must be made accessible to disabled people. The DRC's recent report has suddenly thrown this into the spotlight of the online community and a lot of misinformation has been thrown around. This article attempts to put a stop to this and tell you the truth behind web accessibility.

Of course this article isn't just applicable to the UK, accessibility is a worldwide issue.

Trenton Moss is the driving force behind webcredible; he knows an awful lot about accessibility and the Disability Discrimination Act.

Web accessibility myths

The Disability Discrimination Act says that web sites must be made accessible to disabled people. The DRC's recent report has suddenly thrown this into the spotlight of the online community and a lot of misinformation has been thrown around. This article attempts to put a stop to this and tell you the truth behind web accessibility.

1. Creating a text-only equivalent is sufficient

Creating a separate text-only equivalent can lead to a number of problems:

• A text-only version is not necessarily accessible
• Two versions of the same website represents a huge time and money investment for you
• Your primary site may still be inaccessible to many users
• An ‘extra’ website for blind and disabled users can be one more way to make them feel marginalised from mainstream society

Web accessibility isn't just about blind and disabled Internet users being able to use your site - it's about everyone being able to access it successfully. It really doesn't have to take very much time or money to make your website accessible.

2. It's complicated and expensive to make my website accessible

To develop an accessible website from scratch will cost virtually the same as to develop an inaccessible website. A very large, highly inaccessible website may take a bit more time and money to fix up, although the basic layout and design usually need not change.

Web accessibility is not complicated and anyone with basic web design skills can easily implement it.

3. Accessible and attractive web design can't go together

Many advocates of web accessibility tend to have rather dull, unattractive websites. This is unfortunate, as web accessibility need not affect the design of the website in any way whatsoever. To fully dispel this myth, have a look at the CSS Zen Garden - a beautiful website offering 100% accessibility.

4. Accessible websites stifle creativity

Web accessibility actually places very few restrictions on website design. In fact, as with regular websites, you're only really limited by your imagination when creating accessible websites. Have a look at the CSS Zen Garden to see for yourself that creativity doesn't have to be affected in any way.

5. My site visitors don't have a problem accessing my website

Not necessarily. See Benefits of an accessible website - part 1 to see just how many Internet users you may be excluding from your site. You can be sure that with 35 million websites to choose from it's unlikely that a site visitor prevented from accessing your website is going to waste his time contacting you to ask you to fix the problem.