Brasschaat is the first town in Belgium to make its communal website accessible to blind and partially sighted people. “We wanted to make all requested information available for everyone, and needed a solution in order to make our communal website acessible to blind and visually impaired people “ says mayor Dirk de Kort.
Thanks to the integration of BrowseAloud, the general looks and current concept of the website could be kept unaltered. BrowseAloud is a software which allows for reading out all texts that are published on the website. The software can be freely downloaded. Not only are texts read out, every pointed-and-clicked picture gets an explanation and read texts are magnified in an extra bar on the screen. Speed of reading, voice and even the language spoken can be adapted. Moreover one can have a whole page being read out or can even download it on a mp3-player.
I went to a Drupal trainingsession yesterday at the University of Antwerp. I was familiar with the concept but I hadn’t seen it in action yet. (Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. “http://drupal.org/about“)
UK-based web design company Message carries out an online survey which aims to answer some fundamental questions about usability on the web. The company found that ideas about what constitutes ‘readable’ text are based on tried-and-tested rules from the world of print. The survey is aimed at building a statistical picture on the subject.
The number of senior citizens that surf the web has increased by 40% according to a study by Beweb. This means that it is becoming more and more important to create a website that’s accessible and usable by everyone. By implementing a few easy steps you can improve the experience for all your users.
- Use colors that have a contrast that’s just right
- Use large enough font-sizes
- Allow all users to resize their text size by using relative font-sizes
- Use relevant link texts
Want to learn more about Web Accessibility? Download the free “Dive into Accessibility” e-Book.
