Blog
February 27, 2009
India.gov.in – The Accessible National Portal of India
Filed under: Accessibility Review of Indian Websites, General — Priti Rohra @ 6:04 pmIndia.gov.in, The Accessible National Portal of India has been launched!!
The pleasing aspect of india.gov.in is that it is accessible with a screen reader!
I have visited several Indian government department websites in search of information and found most of them having some problems when accessed using a screen reader. But India.gov.in has given me a pleasing surprise by defeating them all and making an Accessible website that works perfectly fine with a screen reader.
India.gov.in, The National Portal of India has taken care of the needs of disabled users of India and ensured that their site is accessible for all!!
All sections of the website can be used with a keyboard, images were labelled, headings were defined, links were well defined, form labels were well described and supplemented with instructions and error messages. It was very heartening to see that some thing as basic as page title was so self explanatory that users can understand by reading the title, what the page will include.
I feel that the site has taken an innitiative by adding accessibility features, such as Accessibility options which allow users to change contrast and text size, skip to content and skip to navigation. In addition, they have provided an Accessibility Statement which describes the different Accessibility features included across the website.
Being an Assistive technology user, I have never seen any Indian government website so accessible. Hope this rubs on other Government of India and public sector websites and we can see more and more accessible websites in India.
No CommentsFebruary 12, 2009
Web Accessibility Development
Filed under: Developing Technologies, Elderly, General, Hearing, Learning, Mobility, Visual — Mamta Tandel @ 7:01 pmWeb Accessibility refers to making the web site accessible to all, irrespective to the type of disability and the medium which people use. It is crucial that accessibility is looked at on every stage of website development, be it design, content writing and integration.
Web Accessibility Development is not drastically different from regular web development. Web Accessibility Development has an edge over ‘regular’ Web Development; it involves combination and correct use of:
- Valid markups
- Valid Styles
- Web page compliant with:
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
- Different laws, for example in US – Section 508
- Scripts
- Client-side scripts
- Server-side scripts
- Content with:
- Appropriate heading structure and links
- Appropriate color contrasts
- Consistent navigational structure
- Text alternatives for images
- Accessible forms
- Accessible tables (data tables and not layout tables)
- Link to third-party plugins such as PDF, Excel, Word etc
- Accessible documents especially PDF
The above list doesn’t end… an important aspect of Web Accessibility Development includes testing the web pages created. Not only by automated checks but crucial and most importantly by end users including people with different types of disabilities such as visual, hearing, mobility and learning disability. It would be an added advantage if a senior citizen could test the web pages to certify that a web page is actually simple and easy to understand!
So, web accessibility development is for those who believe that there web site is not only for a section of a group in the world, but also includes 60 million of the lot that people believe cannot access or work with the web. Web accessibility development is for those who believe that web site is not a mere creation of fancy and jazzy web pages but an information portal or a source where all users can access the CONTENT and INFORMATION with ease.
Bottom line: Web Accessibility Development looks at not only FACE-VALUE but ADDED-VALUE!
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