What is Web Accessibility?
"Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web."
Web Accessibility Initiative Home
When we think about Web accessibility we must think on the way the Web is used by people with various disabilities. Disabilities range from blindness and low vision disabilities, mental and physical disabilities, to special learning disabilities. Web accessibility means that all people have a reasonable access to the site and are not discriminated in any way.
Why is Web Accessibility Important?
Two-thirds of all adults are now online.
In the past decade Web has become an important resource for all social and economic aspects of modern life. From education, trade and commerce, recreation and social interactions, Web has become an important aspect of everyday life. It is hard to find a person that does not in any way use the Web in daily life.
According to the latest data from The Harris Poll, fully two-thirds (66%) of all adults are now online. This includes more than half (55%) of all adults who access the Internet from home, almost a third (30%) who access it from work, and almost one in five adults who go online from a school, library, cyber cafe or other location. Of course, some people are online from two or more places.
Harris Interactive
Census 2000 counted 49.7M disabled people
Census 2000 counted 49.7 million people with some type of long lasting condition or disability. They represented 19.3 percent of the 257.2 million people who were aged 5 and older in the civilian non-institutionalized population - or nearly one person in five.
If your website represents a business that is trying to attract audience you can not really afford to have inaccessible site because you would miss out on a large number of potential costumers.
U.S. Census Bureau