Even the most well-intentioned business or web site owner, when faced with the prospect of having to make their site more accessible to people with disabilities, may find themselves asking, “Do I really have to go through all of this for such a small percentage of visitors? How many disabled people actually will come to my web site?”

The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2007 Annual Disability Status Report¹ provides statistics based on several criteria, from age brackets to income and employment.

Amongst U.S. population from the “working-age” demographic of 21 to 64:

Disability Type – Percent
Any Disability – 12.8%
Sensory – 2.9%
Physical – 7.9%
Mental – 4.7%

If you look at straight-up numbers from age 5 and up (with the caveat, of course, that the youngest and oldest ends of those spectrums have a lower percentage of actual web users):

Any Disability – 14.9%
Sensory – 4.2%
Physical – 9.4%
Mental – 5.8%

Percentages are one thing. 2.9-4.2% of the U.S. population having hearing or vision disabilities isn’t a number that may wow you. However, when you equate that to real numbers — 5,033,000 to 11,696,000 — it suddenly doesn’t seem so insignificant.

Obviously, those numbers apply broadly to people with disabilities, not people with disabilities who specifically surf the web.

Pew Internet’s The Ever-Shifting Internet Population (link to a PowerPoint document) cites statistics from 2003 that shed some light on disabled web users:

Some highlights:

• 38% of Americans with disabilities surf the web
• Almost 20% of them say that their disability makes web browsing challenging
• Nearly 30% of disabled Americans live in households netting less than $20,000 a year, which makes challenging — if not impossible — the procurement of assistive technologies, which are often expensive

Again, while 38% of what is already a small percentage of American society doesn’t seem like a staggering number, but they are people in cyberspace trying to make the most of their experience, be it research, entertainment, or even shopping.

I’ve heard similar arguments in my life about the need to go out of one’s way to make websites 100% aesthetically-clean and functional in non-IE browsers like Firefox and Safari. That sentiment seems more and more antiquated and silly now, but it’s of a similar vein as the accessibility question.

Are you willing to simply say “Too bad” to 5% of potential visitors/customers? 10%? More?

If web developers or designers engrain in their coding acumen the basic fundamentals of web accessibility, such as proper title and alt tags in all images or not forgetting to list out your doc type or assign a language to your html tag, it’s not moving mountains or spending gobs of money to make your site easier for assistive technologies and disabilities browsers to get around.

It’s not only becoming more and more of a legal issue, it’s also an issue of ethics. It’s maybe hokey and Wilford Brimley-esque to say “It’s the right thing to do,” but really it is. Are you really willing to say that what you’re trying to sell or convey on the Internet isn’t important or relevant to would-be disabled visitors?

You can’t make a site 100% accessible to everybody — it’s just not realistic and somewhere you have to draw a line. But following basic standards will not only make your sites easier for blind, deaf, and physically-limited surfers to get around, but they’ll tend to be more standards-compliant and easier to navigate for -everybody-.

That’s an all-around win.

Footnote
¹ Houtenville, Andrew J. 2005. “Disability Statistics in the United States.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Statistics and Demographics, www.disabilitystatistics.org. Posted May 15, 2003. Accessed March 28, 2005.

Tags: 2007 Annual Disability Status Report, accessibility, disability, pew internet, statistics

In a sea of endless blogs about endless topics, what am I blogging about and why is it important?

The answer to the first question is Web Accessibility.

So why is that important?

We as a society have gone to great lengths to be accepting of people of all cultures, backgrounds, ethnicity, social standing, or physical well-being. Any business worth its salt provides special parking and entranceways for the disabled, for example.

Do those same businesses make such considerations online?

The answer is a bit sketchier.

Accessibility seems to me to be a buzzword that people know in their hearts is important but wind up neglecting. Web site owners may have the noblest of intentions, but when faced with retrofitting a large site into rigid guidelines or jumping through a bunch of hoops when laying out a fresh site, things like money, resources and time tend stop it in its tracks.

A lot of people rightfully got scared about the much ballyhooed lawsuit slapped on Target by the National Federation of the Blind. Beyond a “Boy, now we -really- need to make our sites more accessible!” exasperation, how many of these concerned parties are actually doing what it takes to make their online identity easy for all people to reach, particularly those with disabilities?

In this blog, my goal is to share as much information as I can, as I learn it. I’m new to the web accessibility frontier — I’ll admit that up front. A few articles on the subject piqued my interest awhile back, and I’ve been scouring for more ever since.

Accessibility isn’t just about making your site as navigable for the blind as possible, or providing transcripts of multimedia for the deaf. At its core, following principles of web accessibility makes your site usable for the widest audience possible. A fully accessible site is clean, well-laid out, lighter, browser cross-compatible and intuitive — things that everyone ought to appreciate.

And so, here I am. I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject — I think that’s a LONG way off for now — but as a veteran of the web industry, I find the notion of making sites friendly to all comers a noble, vital endeavor.

Tags: accessibility, disability, introduction, lawsuit, Target