Why W3C Compliant? The Importance of Valid Web Codes

By: Mihaela Lica
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:23:30
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A SEO guru will probably tell you that W3C compliance is important for high rankings and top positions in the SERPs. A lawyer specialized in web law will tell you simple to be in accordance with the Disability Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act or other such laws and legislations. The usual term on the web will be ADA compliant websites. The lawyer could also ask you: is your website ADA compliant or is it awaiting a lawsuit?

Both DDA and ADA stipulate that service providers should ensure good web accessibility for people with disabilities. What does this mean for you? That, as a business owner and online service provider, you should make it possible for people with hearing problems or for people with vision imparities, to read the content of your web pages while being able to navigate through the website easily.

The Internet has opened a new era for all of us. Information is waiting at a click of a mouse, we can access in seconds sites from all over the world and read news about distant countries, check the weather, see what are the latest fashion trends, communicate free of charge with our friends and much more. The Internet has opened new doors for the blind too: special software helps them surf the web, find what they need and “read”. This is easy, inexpensive and fast, the best alternative to audio supports or Braille publications. If you have ever seen a Braille publication you can easily imagine how bulky and difficult to handle a Braille newspaper might get. But how do blind people read the web? Well, they don’t. The reading is made by special text-to-speech synthesizer software and the blind listen. Imagine how much freedom and how much access to information blind people have today due to such special software.

So back to the idea of ADA or DDA compliancy: we need to give the people with disabilities a proof of respect and create websites they can use. No, it’s not just the blind using special software to surf the web. There are people with motor disabilities, people with tremors, people with cognitive disabilities and so on. They all might use software or technologies that adapt the computer to their own disabilities, but none of these will work properly if a code of a website lacks important elements. All in one: software for people with disabilities function properly only on W3C compliant websites. And here you have it, this is your answer: you need W3C compliant websites because you owe it to the people with disabilities that visit your website.

Many web owners require fancy designs, flash websites and special multimedia features, videos and audio files. That wouldn’t be so bad if they would provide a pure text version of their websites and content. But this doesn’t happen. How are deaf people supposed to hear some fancy videos that explain the services provided by a certain online company? And when the website is flash and screen readers (and search engines, by the way) can only read text, how are blind people supposed to find their way back or forward? We owe it to these people to create accessible websites. We don’t live alone. To understand what they are going through, I encourage you to read this transcript to see the Internet world from a blind user’s point of view.

Now back to the initial statement in this article: W3C compliance is good for SEO. Yes, it is. Search engines are user focused. They will definitely place W3C and ADA compliant websites higher on the SERPs. They will certainly give such websites higher rankings. Not over night, but they will. Reason? W3C and ADA compliant websites are user oriented and accessible for all. Such websites prove awareness and care for the less fortunate people.

But is the W3C compliance enough? No. ADA has some important guidelines regarding accessibility, guidelines that should be respected by all web designers. You could also read some guidelines on the WebAIM website. Voices will say that W3C and ADA compliance will restrict design. I’ll say: it will simplify design. Simple websites could look amazing if web designers will take care of pagination, fonts, colors and use of graphic elements.

Mihaela Lica is the founder of Pamil Visions a public relations and online branding company dedicated to promoting quality web content, ethic web development and web accessibility for all.

Article source: Expert Articles

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