10 May 2007

Welsh companies may find that accessibility is worth the effort as it could enable an extra 80,000 residents to access a site.

This is the number of blind or visually-impaired individuals living in Wales who are likely to have difficulties when using an inaccessible site, according to The Waterfront, a magazine for Swansea University students.

According to the publication, many students with visual impairments find vital tasks such as job searching, communications and seeking careers advice much more difficult if this online information is not available to them.

"The key to making life easier for those who find using the [assistive technology] equipment necessary to access the web hard, or pages difficult to see, is to build websites with disability access in mind," wrote author Charlie Duff.

Swansea University states that it is "striving to comply" with the Web Accessibility Initiative priority one and two standards, with options available to change text size and navigate pages using a keyboard.

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