[Developer]

Tutorial:Web content accessibility

Web Accessibility is based around maintaining certain techniques in the design of a web page so as to allow people with disabilities to easy access the information contained on the page. Some of the things that effect accessibility include markup, use of javascript, image and media usage as well as basic layout techniques.
Consider your audience... they may not be able to see, hear or move, they may have a text only browser or and older browser. Accessibility standards are designed to make web sites usable for these people and its increasingly becomeing important that Web designers and developers take note of their requirements. In fact in certain countries its a legal requirement whilst in some others there are legal precedence for the requirement of accessible web sites.
Today there are two primary standards that are used as benchmarks for Web Accessibility.
WCAG
WCAG is produced and maintains by the World Wide Web consortium (W3C). WCAG's standards are based on three levels named Priority 1, Priority 2 and Priority 3. Priority 1 maintains the most basic requirements that a site should attain in prder to be accessible. A good place to start in getting more information about WCAg can be found in their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0[1]
Section 508
Section 508 is a US federal law enacted in 1998. Its basis was for use in all government agencies but it has since been adopted but the wider community as a benchmark for web accessibility. For more information on Section 508 we suggest you have a look at the official website [2]
To ensure that your pages will be accessible by virtually anyone wishes to access them, you need to validate your pages against accessibility standards. The easiest way to do this is to use one of the many online accessibility validators provided by accessibility support groups. Simply type accessibility validator at your preferred search engine to find one.