Universal Design: One Site to Rule Them All


Seen as a type of website welfare, only for the few, they are often ignored as an "only if I have to" or "only if I'm sued" addition to most websites. But following W3C compliance and the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) Level AA can help you reach an untapped $13 trillion market, and also reduce your IT costs, ready you for mobile, improve your Google quality score, and organic search engine placements.


No way you say? Yep, way. Here's how.








OK, so that was the hard part! You're almost there once your code is semantically correct, your presentation layer is separated from your structure, and your scripting files are external.

Choose Your Technologies Wisely

The WCAG AA standard requires that your site be accessible with scripting that isn't keyboard dependent.


Think about it. How nice would it be to only have to maintain your one site, instead of two? Remember, "universal design" is about "one site to rule them all!" No more dual site maintenance. Not only will this help you reach that untapped accessibility market, but also reach more and more mobile users as they come online in droves.

Finally: The Secret Ingredient! Adding your Accessibility Tagging




  • Make sure your link text is descriptive. This is an SEO standard already and just means, for example, don't use "click here" or "learn more" on your anchor text. Make it understandable out of context.





So Again, Why Are We Doing This?

While it's most certainly the right thing (and, soon, possibly legal thing) to do, it's also most certainly the smart thing to do.

So let's review. Why are we doing this? Simply, it's the smart thing to do.



    And it just looks good! OK, I know only geeks like me look at site code for site validity, but I've used that as a deciding factor in site trust.


    Why? Because changing out a CSS/XHTML controlled site layout and design is fairly simple as long as you don't want to rebuild the house -- and even then, it's much easier in CSS. So while making your header purple and changing all your links to red may not be advisable, it will be simple. Or at least much simpler than before!

  3. Mobile Ready. A semantically correct site, loaded with accessibility tagging, is just waiting for that mobile style sheet to make it dumb phone compliant. While it's a little more complex than this, a properly coded site will render correctly in the webkit (smart phones). So dumb phones are an easy adjustment.


Doing all these things will reduce IT maintenance costs, increase your SEO presence, and make your site mobile ready. Now isn't that worth just doing it right to begin with?


About the author

Kristine Schachinger has more than 14 years experience in the creation, development, implementation and maintenance of websites in all areas including government, academia, and ecommerce – with a focus on search engine optimization (SEO), inbound marketing, usability (UI/X), site architecture, & 508 / WCAG accessibility compliance and social media.

She has consulted for, designed and/or overseen website implementations for entities such as USA.gov, AOL, Superpages.com, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Reba McEntire & Ulla Popken.