Accessible Website Design and Application Development

Why It’s Important to Consider Accessibility in Web Design

Accessible website design and development and accessible application design and development both empower users with disabilities to independently navigate, browse, use, and otherwise interact with your digital content. Just as physical accommodations are designed to be accessible to everyone, websites and applications should also consider accessibility guidelines to ensure ease of navigation and enjoyment of their services.

Online, well-implemented accessibility standards enable your digital environment to be usable, navigable, and understandable to a population where roughly one in four people have a disability. 

Need to discuss your accessible web or app development project ASAP?  Contact our accessibility team. We’d be glad to discuss your goals, requirements, and deadlines — and how we can help.

Four Principles of Web Accessibility

Accessible development means building websites and apps that are usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. Disabilities may be

• visual (blind or low vision)
• auditory (Deaf or hearing impaired)
• mobility related
• cognitive

What is Accessible Web Design?

In part, accessible website design or application design

• includes navigation that is efficient and meaningful
• works well with assistive devices as well as standard browsers
• enables all users to perceive the meaning behind images, text, files, and multimedia that you use to communicate about your products, services, and organization
• communicates both content and context: users can tell how different portions of information relate to each other

Website Accessibility Standards

Accessible websites and applications follow widely accepted accessibility standards. The most widely adopted standards in the U.S. are the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and the Federal government’s Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Other guidelines may also apply to different industries or organizations.

Accessible Design and Development Services

Our end-to-end accessibility services list includes designing and developing accessible websites and applications for government, higher education, corporations, and nonprofits. Our accessible website design, mobile application design, and software application design services include

• Accessible Website Design and Development — Building accessible websites and creating or remediating supporting files and documents. We rely heavily on accessibility best practices and using  HTML5 and ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) standards. Our teams are proficient in open source technologies such as WordPress, Drupal and Moodle, as well as custom frameworks in .NET, PHP, AngularJS, and other frameworks.
• Mobile Application Design and Development — Developing accessible mobile apps for the Apple iOS and Android platforms. As people with assistive needs increase their reliance on mobile devices, accessible mobile app development is more crucial than ever.
• Quality Assurance (QA) Assistance — Providing knowledge and resources for the quality assurance teams tasked with ensuring and maintaining accessible environments. Manual accessibility testing can be difficult for quality assurance teams unfamiliar with accessibility. Microassist can greatly reduce the learning curve by providing templates, processes, and tools specifically designed for quality assurance and later, quality control (QC) teams.
• Document Remediation — Remediating PDF, Word documents, presentations, videos, and audio files. Addressing all supporting documents related to your website or app provides a consistently accessible experience for your new environment’s visitors and users.
• Design Review — Identifying accessibility issues in the conceptual phase of product development.

Accessible Design and Development Expertise

We are an industry leader in creating accessible WCAG 2.x Level AA-compliant applications (See W3C’s “Understanding levels of conformance” for more information on compliance levels). Our Microassist development teams have produced accessible products for state government since the early 90s, beginning with technical training and e-learning. Our development teams are well-versed in various computer languages and standards (e.g., .NET, PHP, HTML4, XHTML4, HTML5,  WAI-ARIA), frameworks (Ruby on Rails, AngularJS, Ajax, Bootstrap, JQueryUI, Foundation), and open source (WordPress, Drupal, Moodle) packages.

We are also honored to be an award-winning provider of accessible solutions for web, training, and open-source products, having most recently ranked as award-winning participants in the Open AIR (Accessibility Internet Rally) international web accessibility competition.

Take the Next Step in Building Your Accessible Website or Application

By incorporating accessibility at the creation stage, you showcase your commitment to fostering an inclusive experience for both current and potential site visitors and application users. In the end, users of all abilities benefit from a website or application that presents information in multiple formats, accommodates different technologies, and is intuitive to understand and use by everyone.

Contact our accessibility team today to see how we can help you build your accessible website, mobile application, or software application.