British Web User Statistics
- 75% of website traffic is images.
This creates a difficulty for blind or visually impaired site visitors who
are unable to interact with non accessible graphic intensive websites. In
essence, only 25% of website traffic is text based and therefore easier to
access than graphics based information. This of course is assuming that the
text is presented in such a way as to be accessible.
- 13.4% of global page referals came from search engines
Many site visitors will access your website through a search engine such as
google or lycos. Web accessibility can raise your search engine profile by
providing means of getting your site listed higher in the ratings. By something
as simple as providing alternative text, you are improving your chances of
appearing at the top end of the search results.
- Approximately 25% of all households and 66% businesses
are connected to the internet.
This is the general statistic for all household disabled or not. These figures
may be slightly outdated now as estimates suggest as many as 50% of domestic
homes may be connected to the internet through PC, WebTV or games consoles.
- 29 million adults in the UK have internet access.
580,000000 people have internet access worldwide.
The current british population is approximately 58, 789, 194.
- 2 million people have sight problems that stop them
viewing websites with standard browsers.
This figure was taken from the RNIB website and relates to blind and partially
blind site visitors only. It does not take into account varying forms of visual
impairment or other disabilities, including learning disabilities and difficulties
that affect how a person may browse or use a website.
- 1.7 million people in the UK are unable to read standard
print.
Aside from inbuilt facilities in web browsers to make text larger or smaller
as required, many websites do not cater for web users to define their own
font sizes etc. Often hard coding of websites means that the sizes of the
text cannot be altered at all.
- 17 million Adults have literacy problems.
Graphics and icons are particularly useful for people with literacy problems.
The problem this presents for visually impaired adults can be overcome by
following a basic accessibility guideline of providing alternative text.
- 1 million adults have learning difficulties.
A learning difficulty or disability often means that information based sites
are impossible to browse and navigate due to the text heavy nature of them.
A balance between graphics and plain text can alleviate this problem. A learning
difficulty is not necessarily a block on the ability to learn. Dyslexia is
a good example whereby the disability can be overcome with minimal adaptation.
- 8.5 million people with a disability.
With such a large population of disabled people, not adhering to web accessibility
is locking out a potentially large market. Considering the spending power
of the disabled population is estimated to be in the region of £40 billion
per annum, businesses who are not following accessibility guidelines are missing
out on a large portion of that income.
