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Introduction to Accessibility

The number of people with disabilities has continually grown in recent years. Web accessibility does not only focus on severe disabilities. Due to the rising average age of the population, age-related disabilities have become more and more significant.
Statistics for older Internet users have seen a similar increase. It is assumed that the group of users with special requirements for the Internet is far greater than the statistics given.

People with physical or mental disabilities are often vulnerable to social exclusion. Their access to information, jobs, communication methods, and ability to carry out everyday tasks are often affected or complicated by society's failure to include them because of their disabilities.

The Internet offers means to reduce or abolish many of these barriers. It allows people to easily and comfortably retrieve information that would otherwise be difficult to find.
In the early days of the Internet, there was almost no support and even no research for disabled persons accessing the Web. Although research was carried out on users' acceptance of the new medium and how they interacted with it, minority groups like disabled users were only recently included. For many of them, the Internet could mean an improvement of quality of life and their independence.

Non-disabled Web users can benefit from accessible Web sites as well. Web accessibility standards will allow quicker, easier and more efficient access to information available on the Internet.