Web Site Accessiblity

What is accessibility?
When a website can not be used by a person with a disability, than the site is inaccessible. When your site can be used by a person with a disability, than your site is accessible. So basically, accessibility is the undertaking of making a site the is use able by people with disabilities. Web site accessibility generally deals with the visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive and neurological disabilities. As well as the elderly, whose abilities are declining due to age. Since the US Census Bureau has 19.6% of the US population categorized as havens some sort of a disability, accessibility is imperative to the success of a site. Accessible sites not only benefit the disabled, but also those users without disabilities. Accessible sites tend to be easier to navigate, download faster, and more user friendly.

Visually Impaired Browsing.
The first disability you will probably think about when designing a web site is the visually impaired, or the blind. These have a enormous effect on how your site is perceived. You visuals essentially become insignificant. The site becomes less about how it looks, and more about how it sounds. The bulk of people who have a visual disability use a screen reader to navigate the web. A screen reader is software that ready the text of a website out loud. Screen readers cannot figure out what a image really represents. it will simply read the image's name per what is written in the HTML. For example a human can look at a image of a cat and describe it easily as "a cute white kitten with big eyes". Where as a computer will describe the image as "1234abc.jpg" if there is not ALT attribute written into the HTML. This makes it imperative to include a ALT attribute. The ALT attribute with change how the computer reads the image from "1234abc.jpg" to "cute white kitten".

Web Without A Mouse.
Those who cannot use a mouse, use the tab key. The tab key should take the user throughout the site in the same order that your eyes would, left to right and top to bottom. To do this the creator of the site would need to add what is called a tab index attributes to the elements on the page and number them in order that they should be viewed. Without the tab index, when a user tabs though a site it will take them in throughout the cite in order of how it is marked up. Which is not necessarily the order it should be viewed, though it should be. 

Color-Blind Site Viewing.
Web safe colors are not really "web safe". The colors that are thought of as "safe", look completely different to someone who is color-blind. for this reason color should not be a site's only form of communication. For example if you are showing a rating of something through stars. Someone who is color- blind might not even see the star rating. So it would be best to also have that rating in a text form. Now that does not mean to completely get rid of visual indicators, simply add a text description as well.