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Web Accessibility and Search Engines
Accessibility is a key factors for a successful website marketing. CheckIT Accessibility is defined as how easy a document on the web can be "read" by a spiderBot / crawler. The equation is straightforward: "More Accessibility = More Searchability".
Web Accessibility is not just Section 508 U.S. government guidelines. It's also contains information to help designers, developers and site owners understand, learn, and create sites that are as accessible as possible to those with disabilities, text browsers, spider bots (search engines) and more.
Section 508 Checklist
Graphics and Color
- Do all of your non-text elements such as images have a text equilavent?
- Are you using color only as a secondary indicator of meaning?
Image Maps
- Do all of your client-side image maps have text descriptions for the hot spots?
- If you have to use a server-side map, do you have redundant text links?
Frames and Forms
- If you are using frames, is there a meaningful title in the body of each frame?
- Do all of your NOFRAMES tags includes content?
- Can you complete and submit all of your forms using the keyboard?
Layout
- Are all of your data table row and column headers identified?
- Are all of your data table cells associated with a row and a column?
- Is your site understandable without CSS style sheets?
- Is your CSS style sheets are internal or external to the web page?
Navigation
- Is there a method for skipping navigation links?
- If you can not make your site compliant, is there a text-equivalent?
Multimedia/PDFs
- Are all of your multimedia files synchronized with a text equivalent?
- Did you provide a link to download all required plug-ins?
- Are you using Macromedia Flash with your website?
Cookies
- Are you using a persistent cookies and/or web beacons?
Scripts
- Do all of your scripts output functional text?
- Are you avoiding screen to flicker greater than 2 Hz and less than 55 Hz?
- Is your scripts are internal or external to the web page?
- If a timed response is required, do you alert the user and allow the user to indicate that more time is required?
Sources
The official U.S. General Services Administration's Section 508 site for compliance regulations »
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