Why Be Accessible?

There are three very simple reasons to write accessible code:

1. It is the right thing to do.

Accessibility is making sure that your website is usable by all users. Not being accessible is preventing a certain set of users from using your website properly. You're explicitly saying to those people "I don't give a shit about you".

Don't be a twat; do the right thing, and write your site properly.

2. It means you're not breaking the law.

Yep, that's right: writing inaccessible code is illegal.

There are specific laws against it in numerous places, including: Australia, Canada, Denmark, European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, UK, USA.

If your website is not accessible you are liable to be fined.

All it takes is one unhappy user, and you may end up having to pay thousands (like the Sydney Olympic Committee, who had to pay AU$20,000 for having an inaccessible website).

3. It increases your search engine rankings.

Accessible pages appear higher up in search engines compared to equivalent non-accessible pages.

This is because if your page is accessible, the search engine can understand it correctly and knows what the important parts are. With non-accessible pages, it has to guess which parts are important, and may not be succesfull. Also, because search engines strive to give accurate results, they generally give higher priority to websites which they know about, compared to those about which they are guessing.