RNIB - Accessibility myths

You must provide text only pages on your site
If care is taken making your page accessible, a text only page is very rarely required. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend that only if after best efforts your site cannot be made accessible, should you even consider providing a text only version.

At RNIB, we recommend against providing a text only version as much as possible, simply because being treated differently can reinforce the feeling of marginalisation that someone with a disability experiences. From a business perspective it also leads to dual maintenance of content, which is far from ideal.

You cannot use images
Although for example, blind users cannot see your images, it would be pointless to disadvantage sighted users by not including graphics at all. In fact, graphics can enhance the accessibility of a website for people who have low levels of literacy, the elderly or children.

Adding a simple “alt” attribute to the image in the coding of the page can go a long way to helping your site become more accessible. The "alt" attribute can be used to insert a description of the contents of the image. This description will be read out to a blind person using a screen reader and even though they cannot see the image, they will have enough information to understand what is going on in it.

You have to use a large font
This is not necessary at all. If you use relative font sizes, someone who has a low level of vision can resize the text to suit their needs, and therefore you do not need to use big fonts.

Red and green cannot be used
Red and green are perfectly acceptable colours to use! Just do not use them alone to convey information. For example, a timetable which makes a statement such as "All trains highlighted in red have been cancelled" relies solely on the readers ability to perceive and distinguish colour. This could be simply fixed by saying "All trains that are highlighted in red and bold have been cancelled", that way someone who has difficulty distinguishing the colour red can look for the bold information.

Colour choice is more important than contrast
Both are equally important. It is important to have a flexible design that allows people to override the colours and backgrounds you have chosen.