Accessibility

• Determine what technologies your target audience are using to accommodate their special needs.
• Recruit usability / accessibility study participants.
• Schedule the participants.
• Conduct the test.
• Measure the results.
• Make changes to the site design according to general American Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines and/or the results of your test.

Many of the techniques are encoded into the site knowing in advance that the site needs to be accessible. (At least, it's easier and less costly to do that way).

Some of the basic techniques involve:

• Adding alternative text <alt> and long descriptions <longdesc> to images -- labels to images that have embedded text and descriptions of photos and illustrations.
• Creating "skips" so that users don't have to  wade through the same navigation areas over and over if they don't want.
• Reducing the amount of code that's used on the site so that the reading of it is more efficient (for the sight impaired).
• Creating text versions of video & audio components.
• Sensitivity to color coding and color blindness.
• Using text links in addition to any image links that occur on the site.
• Leaving off the size variable in style sheets so that users that are sight impaired can increase the size with ease.

The challenge is balancing these design requirements with business goals, branding, and overall look.