Web Site Usability Issues - Making Web Sites Handicap Accessible

While computer technology can be a highly empowering tool for those with disabilities, not all Web sites accommodated the needs of the disabled. By the early 2000s, there was growing awareness of the kinds of practices that do and do not make for a quality Web experience for disabled users. For example, various forms of visual impairment, including some kinds of color blindness, can hamper a user's ability to make out everything on the site. Blind users, by the 2000s, were able to utilize Web pages with special software designed to create synthesized speech based on the text of the page and the alternate messages incorporated in the markup of the graphic references. Text-based alternate graphics and menus were thus steps companies could easily take to make their sites more accessible to the visually impaired.