14 DAY TRIAL // The term accessibility has many connotations and regarding the accessibility of websites for visitors it is referring mainly to the separation of site content from the site design. In the first place, your website should be tested in many different web browsers to ensure that it is compatible with most of them. You must validate your HTML code in order to be in compliance with the W3C standards. You can use W3C HTML Validator.
You should carefully design the navigation system. Your visitors should be able to easily navigate your website and to rapidly find the desired information. You can simplify the navigation of your website by adding a search engine facility. You must also optimize on page navigation by providing links to complementary content in the same HTML document. If you will use a HTML template, then the content creation will be simplified because you will always refer to a master document with the same HTML base structure, so you can concentrate only to the information organizing process.
You must know your visitors' audience and their needs. The information provided to them should also be clear, well conceived and having high quality. You should not use images extensively. It is recommended to provide also a short image description when it is necessary to underline a certain text content. The language of the document should be specified, and if it is possible you can try to provide translations to your website text content in order to increase the audience and in the same time the accessibility. For example, there are many translation services available for free and easy to introduce in your website structure only by copying and pasting a few lines of code. The colors used in your website could have a great impact over the content accessibility. As a consequence you should adopt the best color scheme, usually easy to define by using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Also, the use of CSS will allow you to rapidly test different color schemes and text formatting options.
There are many other factors that influence the accessibility of your website, but the main influences are given by choosing the best correlation between the information provided by your site content and its structure (design). This correlation should be seen as a reversible process between any two of these three sides: site content - accesibility - site structure. The correlation exists when all these sides are reciprocally related from the point of view of information flow to the users.