Accessibility

Recently introduced legislation and some high-profile legal cases, are increasing the profile of website accessibility. It's easy to design and build a site which is accessible in basic terms. But producing a truly usable site which supports many different user groups in achieving common goals demands more serious consideration of user needs and requirements in the early stage of development.

Many organizations genuinely believe that if their site passes the Bobby test and displays the Bobby icon, it is "accessible". However, it should be remembered that the Bobby test does not ensure true "accessibility".

Users with special needs who are not sufficiently visually impaired to require assistive technologies can still be frustrated by poor contrast, problematic colour schemes, or tiny, unreadable text. Up to 10% of men are colour blind to some extent, and the increasing number of older users are less likely to have 20/20 vision than those designing the pages.

Update: This document was originally researched and written in November 2000. At that time it was obvious that accessibility was about to become a major issue, especially for public sector webmasters and service providers. Following it's original publication our 'Accessibility & Usability for eGovernment' white paper became the most popular Frontend publication and remains one of our most requested content items to this day.

Note: Since our last review in 2005 Revenue.ie has been completely revised with considerable improvement to both usability and accessibility.

We are in the process of updating this white paper, should you want to be informed when it is released, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it