Recently I came across a quite perplexing question about Accessibility from someone I work with. Today, Accessibility is something we all demand from our web pages, although many websites commercial scripts still haven’t grasped the concept of accessible coding/design on the Internet.

The question arose from writing the Accessibility page in the FAQ for the script we were working on, and it was: “What name do you give to people with disabilities on the Web?”

As far as I am aware there is no universal name for people with disabilities that covers just those that would be unable to use a computer and/or the Internet. I believe this could be a major problem for businesses, as I’m sure there are many that could be offended by the term disabled users, or users with visual impairments.

In general I’m not a big fan of Political Correctness. A lot of it is entirely unnecessary and restrictive on the general public. PC has definitely gone crazy on more than a few occasions, so a lot of the time I don’t see such things as a worry.

However, this is definitely a sensitive subject where Political Correctness does deserve to be used.

The term ‘Disabilities’ is used all over the Internet, even though I often feel that such a general term should not be used. Just because an Internet user is disabled why should he/she not be able to access the Internet safely unless their disability restricted them from using it? Also, I’m sure there are millions of people that suffer from visual problems that wouldn’t call themselves disabled, so why are these being lumped in with the same definition?

That being said, you’re likely to offend at least one person through the way you word your accessibility message, and there is no real way of doing this. However, I would like to offer some suggestions that may work well and not offend any of your websites’ users.

First and foremost, users are people, and regardless of what you may think all people are equal. On the Internet people should be treated the same and have the same access to information as the rest of us. As Web Designers/Developers we can do this by ensuring that the websites we created are accessible to all that wish to use it. Much like how you would test a website/script to make sure that it works you must also test accessibility to make sure that it conforms to W3C guidelines, as well as manually going through the website with CSS/JavaScript/Images all turned off to make sure that there are no restrictions in place that could stop you from using any of the website functionality. Naturally, any Web Designer/Developer worth their money would’ve had this thought out from the beginning.

Finally, as far as an accessibility message for the users of your website goes, if your website is truly accessible then why should you need to mention any users with disabilities in the first place? Take this simple starting message for example:

“This website strictly follows W3C guidelines regarding accessibility and usability standards, and has been thoroughly tested to ensure that all users are able to access this website.”

Why should we have to highlight a users’ impairment/disability at all? If our websites are truly accessible then why aren’t we touting that fact across the website? With enough thorough testing all users should be able to view your website!

Even though manual testing can go a long way the Internet is still not perfect, and various equipment that people use to access web pages do not blend seamlessly with standards, much like how all websites aren’t coded to standards. Also, with other concerns, like spammers, we’ve been forced to take certain precautions that may not be entirely accessible.

At the end of the day issues like this simply shouldn’t be issues. The Internet is far from perfect, and we’re still learning how to use it properly. Let’s all take a step forward and sort this out once and for all.