Creating a Fantastic User Experience For Everyone

Increasing Your Customer Focus Improves Your Business

Making the web a better place for everyone!

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. Since a website is regarded as a service it therefore falls under this act and as such must be made accessible.

At MultiLayer Design we believe building accessibility into our web sites from scratch is fundamental to provide your potential users with a better web experience. With our high coding standards this compliance is added and checked as part of the evolution of your project. This also leads to increasing your potential client base, reducing costs by complying with the guidelines in the first place and helping to reduce maintenance costs.

Accessibility is not just about ensuring disabled people can use your site - it is about ensuring everyone can!

If you are concerned that your existing site does not meet current legislation, contact us and we will help you improve it.

Cognitive impairments - can also play a major part in the users' ability to process elements on numerous applications. This is not limited to just web sites, if you have applications which your users use everyday then these should also be looked at. For example, colour alone should not be used as a visual cue but you should also provide other visual cues in order for the process to be completed.

How do we ensure good accessibility?

We aim to adhere to the W3C WAI-AAA Web Accessibility Guidelines, which are published by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative.

We have made this part of our business ethos. This ensures we have a solid base to work from, although there are a few other key points to bear in mind:

• Enable pages to be Screen Reader compatible
• Ensure non-accessible elements are not essential, e.g. flash movies, complex images

The recent version of the Web Content Accessibilty Guidelines (WCAG) brings version WCAG 2.0. We will be complying with this new set of guidelines, we aim to create intuitive websites as part of our service which can be easily understood.

Usability
It is also important to carry out ongoing usability testing. How users interact with websites or applications is key to understanding how to improve them. Ensuring users are able to obtain the information they require (or conduct the transactions which you want them to) in the most efficient manner possible is an excellent method of testing your website.

How will accessibility benefit my business?

Apart from ensuring your legal compliance, the more accessible your site is, the greater the audience for it. Good Web Design, Web Development & Search Engine Optimisation practices are all centered around maximising the effectiveness of your website with incoming traffic.

Where to next?

• Introduction to MultiLayer Design
• Some of the services we offer
• Sign up for our Newsletter