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A Business Case For Accessible Website Design

More enlightened businesses recognise that accessibility is a huge commercial ROI opportunity rather than a regulatory straightjacket. Disability comes in all kinds of shapes and forms. The market in the UK alone is worth billions of pounds per year.

There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK which amounts to 14% of the population. (Disability Rights Commission)

There are 1.6 million registered blind users. (Employers' Forum on Disability)

Two million UK residents have a sight problem. (RNIB)

One in 12 men and one in 200 women have some form of colour blindness - 9% of the UK population (IEE)

3.4 million people have disabilities preventing them from using the standard keyboard, screen and mouse set-up with ease. (Employers' Forum on Disability)

There are 12 million people aged 60 or over. (UK government)

UK population is also becoming older which means businesses will increasingly need to tap into an older - and often affluent - demographic.

Online businesses are potentially losing out on some £50-£60bn per year buying power. (Employers' Forum on Disability)

Accessible websites are search engine friendly meaning better search engine rankings.

Accessible websites are smaller in file size which means that pages are served faster. Users/customers can find what they want more quickly.

Accessible websites are more readily adaptable for handheld and other devices.

About the author:

Faheem Razak is the CEO of 1075 Web Design Agency based in London specialising in accessible standards compliant website design.

Have your website tested for usability issues, register for a free w ebsite usability review.

Author: Faheem Razak

 

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Being a webmaster is a much more important job than most companies would dare admit. Webmasters are responsible for the company web presence on every level, from the website copy to the web and email server administration. Additionally, webmasters are often tasked even more duties that should be considered unrelated responsibilities for the position of webmaster. These extra duties often will include online as well as offline promotion and marketing, search optimization, advertising, application programming, graphic design and/or brand management. The role of the webmaster has grown over the years and webmasters need to grow with the company's expectations or the website will not succeed. For instance, it is easy to get banned from the search engines for not knowing the correct methods to use to optimize a website for a better results ranking from the search engines for any particular search phrase.

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However, please note that often both sides of the coin are presented here. Some webmasters swear by Linux and we offer articles by such authors to give insight to their creativity. Others are die-hard Microsoft software fans and use Windows based servers. Despite the bias, each system has its own advantages, and such articles are reprinted here for their positive contribution to those platforms, not to enforce their bias. It is we that have to make the final analysis.
 

This difference is even more apparent when I am showcasing and promoting white hat SEO (search engine optimization) and a black hat SEO article is published here, which method if followed could get a website banned from the search engines. The reason I allow it a small platform is to showcase its apparent and obvious idiocy in contrast to white hat SEO techniques. And as I cannot edit these articles in order to correct them, I let their illogicality and stupidity stand on their own for a time without any edits. But in case their spaminess is not apparent, I often do not let such articles stand long.
 

 

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