Third sector organisations work hard to serve their communities. However, many overlook the need to ensure their website content is accessible to all visitors, including disabled people. Websites that are not designed with accessibility in mind can exclude disabled people from accessing information and services.

In this short post, I explore why accessibility is crucial for third sector oranisations, and some steps they can take to ensure their websites are accessible.

What is Web Accessibility?

Web accessibility refers to the practice of designing websites that are accessible to disabled people. For example, people with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments. Everyone, regardless of their abilities, should be able to access information and services online.

There are laws and guidelines that require websites to be accessible, including The Equality Act 2010, British Standard 8878 Web Accessibility Code of Practice and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Why Accessibility Matters for Third Sector Organisations

Third-sector oranisations have a unique responsibility to ensure their websites are accessible to all users. These organisations often work with marginalised communities, including disabled people so, it’s important that their websites reflect their commitment to equality and inclusivity.

In addition to ethical considerations by ensuring that their content is available to all users, these organisations can expand their impact and connect with people who may not have been able to access their services otherwise.

If their websites are not accessible third sector oranisations leave themselves open to potential legal challenges – if they are percieved to be discrimination against disabled people – under the Equality Act 2010. Lawsuits and negative publicity can harm the reputation and effectiveness of third sector organisations.

Designing an Accessible Website for Third Sector Organisations

Creating an accessible website involves following best practices for website design and using tools and resources that can help ensure accessibility. Some best practices include:

• Creating a logical structure for the website, including headings and subheadings.
• Providing alternative text (alt text) for images, which describes the content of the image for users who cannot see it.
• Using clear and concise language that is easy to understand
• Ensuring that videos are captioned or have transcripts available.
• Providing options for users to increase text size or adjust colors for better readability.

There are also several tools and resources available to help third-sector organisations create accessible websites. Accessibility checkers can scan websites for potential accessibility issues, and WCAG guidelines provide detailed information about best practices for accessibility.

Website accessibility is a crucial aspect of web design for third-sector organisations. By ensuring that their websites are accessible to all users, they can increase their reach, align with their missions, and avoid legal risk.

Nonprofits that have been using Facebook for a year or more consistently comment “OK, Facebook is great, but how can we take our Facebook Page strategy to the next level?”

Below are 3 advanced Facebook Page strategies in response to that question:

1. Create Customized Tabs.

Advanced strategies require advanced tech skills. If you know html and have a good graphic designer, then you can use the Static FBML App to create and completely customize Tabs on Facebook Pages.

If you don’t know html and want customized Tabs for your Facebook Page, then you have two options: 1) Hire someone who knows html and Facebook. 2) Get in touch and we will help you add a tab to your Facebook page.

2. Incorporate your Facebook Page into your Thank You emails.

Most nonprofits send immediate thank you emails to online donors and signatories of petitions. Make sure to add a simple “Become a fan of [Organization Name] on Facebook!” into your email.

3. Incorporate your Facebook Page into your mobile campaigns.

Ask your text alert subscribers to fan your Facebook Page, but make sure you link to the mobile version of your Facebook Page. Most nonprofits haven’t even begun to think about mobile tech, but mobile Web usage is on track to hit 3 billion+ users in 2011.

Accessible websites attract more people

Apart from the 10 million Disabled people in the UK and 50 million in America, accessible websites will be easier to use by older people, people with slow connections or older technologies and people with low literacy. Older people are the fastest growing group of new users in many countries. As many older people have multiple impairments, accessible sites are likely to be more attractive to this group.

Lower costs and more traffic

Pages built using web standards tend to be smaller and they tend to load quicker. This leads to the first and most obvious saving – lower bandwidth costs.

What is not so obvious, however, is that faster loading pages can also generate additional traffic and revenue. For example, when Multimap.com redesigned their site using web standards they estimated they saved 40,000 Gb of bandwidth per year – but they also found that their advertising revenues increased. The quicker loading pages encouraged people to spend more time on the site.

Web Standards means shorter development times and re-usable content

Production and maintenance costs are lower when content is packaged in highly structured ways, for example, when standard (X)HTML is used. Separating the structure of content, i.e., headings, lists, images, paragraphs, from the way that content is presented opens up opportunities to create multiple ‘views’ of that content.

As a result, content can be optimized with less effort for delivery on hand-held devices, formatted for printing or delivered to assistive devices such as screen readers.

When the time comes around for a new design, it is easier to substitute a new style sheet than to spend hours changing hundreds of font tags and background colour attributes.

Web standards means you don’t waste time battling with Browser quirks

When using Web standards there is no need to produce multiple versions of pages to cope with the quirks of different browsers. The time and effort previously required to create and maintain ‘browser sniffing’ scripts can now be re-deployed to add value to the site for visitors.

Web standards helps you break free from proprietary technologies

Using Web standards can free organisations from being captives of browsers dependent on proprietary tags and rendering behaviour. For example, IBM’s move to Open Source desktop clients has reportedly been held back due to their web based systems being built on top of the non-standard Internet Explorer web browser.

Less errors in pages means less time dealing with complaints

Without working to standards – it is not possible to check for markup errors; there are no rules to check against. Standards base web pages can be checked against code validators such as the W3C validator – highlighting any errors – and allowing you to get those errors fixed. If you website works for more people on more browsers you won’t have to spend time replying to emails from people complaining your site doesn’t work.

Content is future-proofed and compatible with older browsers. Pages built using web standards will display more consistently across browsers and platforms, including older browsers. Your content will not necessarily look the same in old ‘non-standard compliant’ browser but the bottom line is that the content will still be available.

Greater search engine visibility

Search engines are able to index web pages more accurately if the content on those pages is well structured. For example, when keywords appear in page headings many search engines give extra weight to those words when indexing the page. A web page where headings are improperly marked up is likely to suffer in the search rankings compared with a page with the same content that is marked up correctly. An accessible website will have alternative text for images and multimedia – and this will provide more text be indexed by search engines.

Accessible websites designed using Web Standards leads to real measurable benefits: more visitors, increased income, decreased cost, greater search engine visibility, faster loading and easier to use pages. Sell the benefits to websites commissioners, not the ideology.

This article was written by Jim Byrne, a Web site accessibility specialist since 1996.

Contact us now if you are interested in having your own accessible website built using Web Standards.

We work with organisations of any size, from Charities with one worker to public sector organisations with hundreds. Whatever the size we will work hard to help you meet your project goals.