Accessibility

Oddly enough

there are no hard and fast rules specified in current legislation for building a website which is accessible and therefore DDA compliant. The current government recommendation is "that a website should exceed the basic level of compliance that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend in their Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WAG) version 1.0 and aim for Double AA compliance"

Aside from the need to comply with the law, there are two other very good reasons for making your website accessible.

More people can view it properly

Integrating accessibility into a website efficiently creates websites that work effectively for more people in more environments.

• They may be viewing your website on a PDA, a mobile phone or a 1600px screen.
• Not everyone has the lastest version of Internet Explorer, with all the necessary plug-ins and programs needed to view some sites.
  
• They may have "Favourites" open in their browser window, reducing screen width.
  

An accessible site reaches more users. More users means more business.

Search engines will like it.

In making your website more accessible to web users, you're also making it more accessible to search engines. Search engines cannot usually understand images, JavaScript, Flash, audio and video content. By providing alternative content to each of these, all areas of your website will be accessible to search engines, who'll then be able to have a better understanding of its purpose.

The more confident a search engine is of your website's purpose, all other things being equal, the higher it will place your website in the search rankings.