In the early days of the internet, the web was often called the "information superhighway", a place where information was to be more usable, more accessible than ever before.

As the use of the internet has grown in use and content over the years this basic principle has become more and more diluted. While web development and the technologies available have come a long way many problems still exist, from poorly planned and developed websites to inappropriate use of technologies like streaming video and Flash. In short, building an accessible website requires considerable effort, experience and knowledge both on the part of the website owner and the web developer.

The term "accessibility" has come to be associated with providing for disabled users - and visually impaired users in particular - but this narrow definition is exclusive in itself: it ignores the fact that your information is for everyone, and needs to be able to be accessed and understood by everyone. From users that browse the web using screen-readers, to those with PDAs, or those with older browsers, the way in which your website is built and your content is written should address how these users will be able to access your site.

We believe that an accessible site is to everyone's advantage:

• An accessible site is an inclusive one - your information, services, and products are available to and understood by the widest customer-base that is possible;
• An accessible site means that you avoid the bad press and poor customer relationships that an overly complicated, unusable website can generate - in our experience, reverse is often true;
• An accessible site satisfies the legal requirements for an accessible website, avoiding the financial penalties that an inaccessible website can incur;
• An accessible site has a longer life-span as it is built around your content and for your users, not around the technologies that are en vogue at the time you built the site; and
• An accessible site will get better ranking in search engines like Google and Yahoo - the clearer structure and content make it easier for users, including search engines, to understand and navigate through your site.

Our Approach to Accessibility

The new WCAG 2.0 guidelines for web accessibility were published in December 2008, and make a great starting point for building an accessible website.

At Being, we don't believe in passing automated tests, nor in "ticking boxes" against generalised guidelines for the sake of it. Our approach is based on:

• Integrating accessibility considerations into the project planning and development from the start;
• We think about your site, what you want to achieve, and about the needs of your users;
• We work with the most effective and the newest techniques to provide a stable, technology-independent foundation to work from;
• We work with our client to build an understanding of the problems, the solutions, and the long-term nature of an accessibility policy that will result in real world accessibility, based around the generation and addition of content and the proactive and reactive handling of the issues that users have found when browsing the website;
• We work with the accessibility guidelines to provide an accessible solution that fits your objectives and your user's needs – while we work from a foundation of Level A compliance, we typically take elements from Level AA and Level AAA as required to meet these goals;
• We work towards the full support of the recognised W3C standards for coding and the inclusion of appropriate technologies; and
• We also recommend a user-centric approach, with our clients engaging their users: thinking about what the user requires; what are the impediments to easy and effective usage of the site that users have found; and how can we solve these problems together with the user.

In Summary

At Being we believe that your website should be inclusive, built to remove the barriers that often prevent others, both people and computer programmes, from making full and effective use of the site.