Is my site Accessible?
A goal in making any new web site should be to make it accessible to everyone, this is quite a difficult task - but, practice makes perfect so let’s get started.
There are a few quick tests that can be applied to any web site to test it’s Quality and Accessibility. To make the tests as quick and easy as possible download the Firefox web browser and the Web Developer Extension if you don’t already have these.
Validate your (X)HTML / CSS
Is your code valid?
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Disable CSS
Using the Web Developer Toolbar - CSS > Disable Styles > All Styles
Is the site still readable and usable?
If your site has been coded to web standards using semantic markup - your page should be clear and usable without styles applied.
The headings(h1, h2 etc..) should give you an accurate breakdown of the pages information.
Viewing your page like this gives you an idea of how search engines see your site - and shows you which content can be noticed by the search engine.
Disable Images
Using the Web Developer Toolbar - Images > Disable Images > All Images
Is all your content still viewable and readable?
Many people could be viewing your site like this - Whether to save bandwidth on low speed internet connections or using a browser on a small device.
Perhaps you have provided background-images to add contrast between the background and the color of the font - now, without images your fonts are all but unreadable. You will need to provide a background-color as well so that without images the contrast between the font color and background is still strong.
Test in the major browsers
Does your site look the same in all modern browsers?
Internet Explorer 5.5, 6 and 7 - The most popular browsers. The earlier versions can be downloaded from the evolt browser archive
Firefox, Opera, Netscape - These three browsers run on windows so you should be able to test in these browsers at least.
Safari is the most popular browser on macintosh computers.
Konquerer is a browser that runs on the linux operating system.
Increase the font-size
This feature is usually located under View > Text Size
Does your layout break?
All modern browsers come with this functionality built in and will be used in the future more and more. Users with poor eye sight, a person displaying a web page to another person in the room, or users with really large displays may want to increase the size of the font to make the text more readable. Your site needs to constructed in a way that offers flexibility to the design of the elements containing text.
If your site performs well under all these conditions then you have a quality, accessible site that has been created using a web standards methodology.