Why (not) developing accessible websites?

After listening to many web accesibility lectures or presentations and reading a lot of articles and posts I got an idea about the issues with accessible web development. There are a lot of missunderstandings that not only clients who want a website but also web designers and developers believe into. They simply do not see the benefit that they could get with an accessible website or they simply do not acknowledge the need for it at all. Following I will describe the most common misunderstandings for both clients and developers.

1.) Not understanding the term "Web Accessibility" 

There are a lot of people who never heard the term »Web Accessibility«. I was listening to one of the presentations at ICCHP 2016, where they presented some answers to a question, what do you think web accessibility means. There were a lot of people who simply thought that »accessibility« reffers to a certain website being »online« and ready for viewing, which means they think that a website is not accesible if for example they loose internet connection or a server breaks down.

Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers for people with disabilities. Making website accessible means, to make it accessible for people with dissabilities.

2.) There are not many disabled à FALSE!

The United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities states that "persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others"(http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/health/disability)

At the EU level, about 28% of women aged 16 and over declare an activity limitation compared to 23% of men of the same age group (http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1569&context=gladnetcollect).With the population aging, the group of disabled people is becoming larger and larger.  

3.) People with disabilities cannot use a computer à FALSE!

With the help of Assistive Technologies that provide greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, disabled can use a computer without problems, if the softwares are compatible with them. Therefore they can also browse the web without problems, if the websites are accessible. 

A lot of disabled use computers frequently in their daily life, some of them even professionaly. 

(Aditional reading: http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter03.html)

4.) It would not bring profit à FALSE!

Not only disabled gain from accessible websites. Usually the complete UX is improved, which means that everyone benefits from it. Not only that accessible websites are easier to interact with, they are also better optimized for the search engines. That means that people would like the page more and the page would be easier to find, which of course leads to more profit.

5.) Making website accessible is too complicated à FALSE!

Making a website accessible in the present day is relatively easy, since the guidelines for accessibility are described so well. If accessibility is kept in mind from the start it is easy to just add essential elements to code. Developers do not need any complicated knowledge, but just have to follow descriptions in the WCAG guidelines. 

6. ) It is expensive to make website accessible à FALSE!

Making a website accessible is not particularly expensive, especially if the accesibility is kept in mind right from the start of development. There is not much additional code that has to be written, so the costs should not be significally higher.  

7.) It is time consuming to make website accessible à FALSE!

Making a website accesible would not add a considerable amount of time to the development process. If developers think about accessibility from the first day they start with the development it would be just a few additional lines of code combined, which would not delay the developing process in any aspect.

8.) It will decrease the loading speed à FALSE!

The sites do not load any slower if they are accessible, since they do not require any additional content that would slow down the loading process. What is needed in the most cases are just simple HTML elements and some additional Javascript.