ACCESSIBILITY

1. Maximise the number of potential visitors

You don’t know which device visitors will use to access your site. You may think you know, but unless you’re building an Intranet for a company that has a policy on which browsers may be used you really have no idea.

The only thing you can be reasonably sure of is that they are using something that can read HTML. By using web standards properly you make sure that you have done your part in making your site work with the largest possible number of browsing devices.

2. Faster loading and reduced bandwidth usage

Documents will be smaller and faster for visitors to download. Like it or not, there are still many, many people connecting to the Internet through dialup.

If your site has a hosting plan with a limit on free bandwidth usage, smaller documents will reduce costs - provided traffic doesn’t increase.

3. Provide the foundation for accessibility

Using web standards does not guarantee that all aspects of your site will be accessible to people with disabilities, but it is a very good start. Make sure your documents are valid and well-structured and you’re well on the way towards having an accessible site.

4. Improve search engine rankings

Well-written content delivered through clean, well-structured, HTML is delicious food for search engine spiders and will help your rankings. This, of course, will lead to increased traffic, which is what most website owners want.

5. Future-proof content

There is no way anyone can guarantee with 100% certainty that the documents created and stored electronically today will be readable in a hundred years. Or even fifty years. But if you separate content from presentation and use current web standards, you have done the best you can to ensure that your content can still be read even after you’re gone.

6. Good business sense

Why would any business owner say no to more visitors? A faster site? Improved search engine rankings? Potential good publicity? It doesn’t make sense to do so.

7. It’s the right way to do things

The web standards way is the way we should have built the web from the beginning. And now that we can, why not do something the right way and have a really excellent reason to feel good about yourself.

8. Make your website easier to maintain

Rather than wading through many kilobytes HTML and images just browse through a clean and well-structured document when your site needs updating

Removing, inserting or editing presentation-free content is much easier and more efficient. Using CSS to control layout also makes it much easier to make site-wide design changes.

9. Make yourself look professional

People will be able to look at your site and know that you are a company who likes to keep up with changes in technology.

10. Cater for all visitors

Use web standards combined with best practices for accessibility and give your clients a chance to talk about how they cater to all people, and how they find it important that everybody can use their services or find information about their products. You will also avoid the bad publicity that can be caused by shutting out visitors like disabled people, Mac users, and mobile phone users.

Article originally from 456 Berea Street - www.456bereastreet.com