How Do I Make My Website Accessible The Right Way?

The other day I was talking to a customer, who wanted to revamp his website and make it accessible. He mentioned that he had seen and liked a website that had an website accessibility widget installed. ‘Couldn’t we just install that widget to make our website accessible?’ He asked. I politely replied, telling him that web accessibility can’t be achieved by merely installing a widget. This is not the first time I had come across this question; sadly, far too many people think that this is all we need to do.

The truth is that a widget will never render a website accessible. Website accessibility can only be achieved by following the strict web accessibility guidelines known as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines describe how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. By correctly applying these guidelines, a website can be made accessible.

In May 2019, the South Australian Government released its Online Accessibility Policy . This policy is for all public-facing government websites, including schools websites. Importantly, this can also be applied to any website.Edu Net Solutions are proud to have contributed to the policy’s development (see Alpa – Consultation at https://accessibility.sa.gov.au/about). It is the first of its kind in Australia and has already received many accolades at national and international level.

My team and I have invested considerable time, energy and resources into ensuring that we can develop accessible websites that adhere to WCAG and the policy. Notably, developing accessible websites is a task that only highly trained developers can do, as it is complex. In April 2019, Edu Net Solutions achieved Level Level AA Accessibility Compliance by Vision Australia.

Soon after we launched the first accessible school website in South Australia which was publicly acknowledged.

Edu Net Solutions is proud to be the only web development company in South Australia that produces accessible schools websites and one of just a handful in the country. We also offer similar services to other institutions and organisations.

If you want your school or company’s website to reach all members of your community, give us a call. I’d love to see if we can help.