14 June 2007

Although it helps to improve the experience for many end-users, good web accessibility could also have other positive business impacts, it has been claimed.

Web expert Matt Bailey, speaking at the Search Engine Strategies Canada conference, urged companies to design accessibly so that their sites perform well in searches, reports internetnews.

Search spiders, said the expert, are "the most disabled users of your site".

"Search engine crawlers cannot see touch or feel and they don't eat cookies. All they can do is download pages, find text and follow links," he explained.

Mr Bailey continues that using web design features such as Cascading Style Sheets and incorporating the World Wide Web Consortium standards would also help to boost search engine performance.

Recently, search engine professional Frank Stoczko wrote on DevStart's Promotion World site that designing to accessibility standards is one of the key techniques to ensuring a site's visibility.

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