Thanks for your comment. I totally agree with you on all counts. I have posted before on colour blind issues and will be posting on other issues in the future. What my focus is to work with 1 area (visibility at the moment) and find out as much as I can and then move onto the next. I chose to focus on visual for the exact reason that most people think of accessibility in that light and i need to at least know what everyone focuses on before moving onto other areas.

As I mentioned in the blog post we need to encourage people to have a usability approach to accessibility and not a check-box approach. If a site is usable for the target users then this should not even be a real topic as it really does fall into usability.

As an aside I find it difficult to read light text on a dark background. Everyone is different and in this case I went for what was better for me.

Niqui

There are plenty of other disabilities out there, from people with motor problems through to visual problems. When people start talking about disabilities everyone thinks access keys, JAWS etc., there’s a lot more to it than that.

For some the white background of your page would be a realy problem.

Yes the stats are high, but high enough to warrent the amount of work required? I would say obviously not.

Maybe I’m wrong and these large companies just don’t want the money, but I would have thought that to be unlikely.

I do think though that as accessability gets easier to implement, and therefore costs less, we will see it grow.

That is a very relevant question. Most developers and organizations lack an understanding of how large this audience is and the potential ROI.

I will be posting more about this topic in the future and am very glad for any input and feedback I get from developers and clients as to how they feel.

In the mean time here are some statistics from an article on e-consultancy on this topic.

• There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK. (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)
• Businesses can effect significant upturn in online sales by making websites more accessible.
• Accessible web sites are better websites for users anyway, irrespective of disability.
• Better accessibility means better conversion rates.

You say Amazon is bad, and its obviously extremely successful, so why should they bother. What percentage do u think their sales would go up, if they accessibility was the best? Very little i would presume.

Unless these markets are being targeted, clients are forced to, or they are losing a hell of a lot of money, why should they invest?