Under disability discrimination legistlation, anyone who offers a service is required to make all reasonable efforts to provide an equality of service to anyone who suffers any form of disability; we've all seen wheelchair ramps and wide doors spring up on the High Street of late.

Every disabled person has slightly different requirements, so there's no quick aand easy answer to the question "how can I make my website more accessible / conform to the law". The concensus view is that two elements need to be considered: (a) font / size and (b) colour. With font and size, an option to provide a single large font page (even though very few words may be seen at once) is generally considered to fit the bill; for colour, I've seen examples that let web sites switch between black on white, yellow on dark blue, white on black and dark blue on yellow.

But the consensus view isn't ideal for everyone - indeed, there are as many different ideals as there are people. I've learnt today of research by the University of Bangor (that I need to follow up up) that shows that the ideal colours for someone who's dyslexic are black on light blue, or black on light green. Either light blue or light green on black is also very good. For some reason that's not yet understood, yellow on black and black on yellow is pretty dreadful ... as are black and red, and red and black. The frequently-seen blue on yellow and yellow on blue are great for some people, and horrendous for others. "There's a doctorate in researching that for someone" says one of my trainees on today's course, who was one of the subjects in the original Bangor study and continues to take an interest in their work.
(written 2004-12-06 18:08:29)

 A213 - Web Application Deployment - Commercial and Legal Aspects
G902 - Well House Consultants - Web site techniques, utility and visibility

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