The RNIB have taken low-cost airline BMI Baby to court over their website, as it is not possible for the blind to book flights through their website - it's a legal requirement that if you offer an online service, it's not provided in a way that is discriminatory.
In this particular case, the booking process involves a pop-up calendar for picking booking dates, but it's only usable via a mouse. They should have provide an alternative method for the blind.
Contrary to many people's ideas, it is possible to make a website fully accessible to the sighted and the visually incapacitated, and here's some of the things we do and have been doing for some time to make sure our websites are accessible:
- Check them against accessibility guidelines
- Check page accessibility using online tools such as http://validator.w3.org/ and http://www.cynthiasays.com/
- Check that the website is still fully usable and coherent when all images and graphics are removed, using a text-only browser such as Lynx
If you'd like us to apply some of these checks to your website, please get in touch.