Myth: Text-Only Versions

A common approach to providing accessible web pages is to design a site, and then make a separate accessible site, that is, text-only version. In today's environment, providing separately developed sites is rarely the best approach for accessibility, or for business. However, providing truly equivalent information that can be accessed graphically or textually from the same content source is advantageous.

There are several problems with providing a text-only version, for example:

• separately developed versions are rarely equal
• the primary version often lacks even the most basic accessibility

Technologies and development efforts that are beginning to provide the tools and methodologies needed to ensure that truly equivalent multiple versions of a site can be provided from a single content source. For example, using XSLT to transform XML documents into other markup more suited for specific configurations or ASP to dynamically generate pages from database or XML files. Organizations are now creating multiple versions from a single content source optimised for various modalities. This is a promising development.

In the past, common assistive technologies were not able to handle complex web page designs. Now, technologies let you develop visually appealing, complex, dynamic websites that are also accessible.

The above is provided, with permission, from the "Understanding Web Accessibility" chapter by Shawn Lawton Henry in Constructing Accessible Websites