Wired has an article about accessibility of website based on the infamous Odeon cinema website incident. Usability guru Jeffrey Zeldman, who co-founded the WaSP (Web Standards Project) coalition to promote good accessibility practices, said it makes "perfect sense" that wayward websites are brought into line by the people who use them.

It could be a win-win. Mr. Somerville did Odeon a favor by solving problems that prevent customers (from) using the site. The company could easily have spent six figures learning the same thing from a consultancy.

Even if the next volunteer who cleans up after a big site's mistakes is also shot down by the legal eagles, the buzz that gets generated by these events will make others think about their own sites' accessibility.

The UK anti-discrimination Disability Rights Commission says it is "only a matter of time" before companies are sued for having inaccessible websites, usability is gaining a higher profile.

Judy Brewer, director of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative, said the consortium's standards ensure a good experience for both disabled and other users - if designers play by the rules.

Not all businesses have yet understood the advantage in ensuring their websites are accessible to people with disabilities, who constitute a significant percentage of the marketplace.

We are lucky to have a style-obsessed designer, who is also a web-page accessibility freak, working with us. Thanks to him (and David) our blogs conform to the consortium standards of web accessibility. Honest.

Note: tBBC blog site is not strictly following all the standards for two reasons a) it was designed before we got onto the accessibility bandwagon and b) we are now in the process of redesigning it. So watch this space, some amazing changes, well, changes anyhow, you sceptical readers, will take place here Real Soon Now!

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