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Separate accessible version? No thanks!

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Subject:  Separate accessible version? No thanks! Trenton Moss
Author:   Trenton:   view profile | all posts by this author | add to favourites
Date:   10:29:28 21 June 2004
 
In the recent wake of the wave of publicity surrounding web accessibility, more and more websites are creating separate accessible versions of their websites. Which leads me to utter one word: WHY??Implementing web accessibility ain't difficult, especially when creating a website from scratch. A great example of an offender is the Euro 2004 website, which seems to have gone out of its way to make its main site inaccessible because they've made an accessible version. In fact, I prefer to use the accessible version as the homepage on the main version takes a whopping 87 seconds to download on a 56k modem (still used by 3 in 4 Internet users in the UK).They obviously don't know about the many disadvantages a separate accessible version can cause:
  • Two versions of the same website represents a huge time and money investment
  • The primary site may still be inaccessible to many users
  • An 'extra’ website for blind and disabled users can be one more way to make them feel marginalised from mainstream society
If the Euro 2004 organisers had actually chosen a web design company who knew the first thing about web accessibility then they wouldn't have had to pay for and maintain two websites. They could have made just one fully accessible website, which would look exactly the same as the main site, offering the same level of functionality, and still be fully accessible.
 
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  • Separate accessible version? No thanks!, Trenton, 21 Jun 10:29
    In the recent wake of the wave of publicity surrounding web accessibility, more and more websites are creating separate accessible versions of their websites. Which leads me to utt ...
    • Separate accessible version? No thanks!, Loz, 21 Jun 11:16
      It's possible to have teo sites that pull info from the same database, though. Templates for a second accessible site would be limited, easy to build and therefore not too much wor ...
      • Separate accessible version? No thanks!, matt , 21 Jun 12:52
        I understand why accessibility should be considered when building a site, but in reality there are a lot of people in the loop for large corporate / organisation sites, and everyon ...
        • Separate accessible version? No thanks!, Dan Zambonini, 21 Jun 15:21
          Hi Matt, Yes indeed - the CC/PP technology offers this very functionality (although implementations of it are sparse at the moment; I believe IBM have one working). CC/PP all ...
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