Whether you own an e-commerce or web development company, making your business website easily discoverable and successfully converting online visitors is essential. Prioritizing accessible web design is critical to avoid potential challenges. Ensuring that your website is usable by everyone involves ensuring website accessibility. You can be relieved that many tools, resources, and advice are available to help you quickly create an inclusive website.
Why It’s Important to Make Websites Accessible?
Making your website accessible will ensure that all of your potential users—including those who are disabled—have a great browsing experience and can quickly access your content. You can make the site more user-friendly for everyone by adopting accessibility best practices. Establishing your website reachable is an excellent way to show your company’s commitment to diversity. Additionally, creating an accessible website can increase its overall success, and it might even enhance the user experience for every visitor to your website. There are several ways to improve accessibility on your website. A few of these include using clear and concise language, providing video and audio captioning, and adding alternative text (alt text) for images.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are your crucial online resource for comprehending and putting them into practice, advancing web accessibility, and enhancing user experience. It was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make achieving web accessibility a little easier. You’ll discover trustworthy resources for accessible design, coding, and content. Additionally, you’ll learn about immediate fixes for typical accessibility issues for people with disabilities and preventative measures.
Keyboard navigation for the website accessibility
Keyboard accessibility ensures all users can access information without relying on a mouse. One of the most crucial components of web accessibility is keyboard accessibility. A keyboard is frequently used by people who have motor disabilities. Using a keyboard can improve a user’s ability to navigate and get to a web page’s content and functionality for many disabled users.
Screen reader compatibility
A screen reader compatibility test will guarantee that blind users can smoothly access all features of your website. Screen readers are primarily used by individuals who are blind or have low vision and allow users to connect with their devices without using their eyes. Screen reader accessibility should be considered by website owners and developers when developing and upholding their online properties, given the prevalence and significance of screen readers in modern society. This guarantees an excellent experience for all visitors and equal access to the same content.
Use high-contrast colors
Low color contrast may make it challenging for some users to read text. Because of this, using colors with a high contrast ratio, like black and white or black and yellow, is good. All elements on the page can be distinguished from one another owing to the color contrast on your website. For instance, the text should be prominent rather than disappearing into the background. There are a few online resources you can make use of to increase visual accessibility. For example, The Contrast Checker may be helpful when selecting the colors for your site. Color combinations can be tested using this tool. It can also be used to create a score for color combinations that already exist on your website.
Accessible fonts
The wrong font size and type selection can make using a website more frustrating, but it also reduces conversions and session length. Implementing a tremendous visual font hierarchy makes it easier for users to navigate and improves their user experience. A font is accessible if it won’t exclude or slow down website visitors with disabilities like blindness, vision loss, or reading disorders. By selecting the ideal font, you can increase everyone’s ability to read and understand your website, increasing your business’s online reach.
Descriptive link text accessibility
Descriptive links serve the purpose of giving users the proper context for which the link will take them. Links must make sense because screen reader users frequently navigate websites by clicking on one link after another via the tab key (or shift tab to go backward). Screen reader users and individuals with cognitive disabilities can distinguish between links with the aid of descriptive link text. Regarding descriptive links, there are two key factors to keep in mind: crafting the link text and understanding how screen readers will perceive it.
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)
WAI-ARIA aims to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities through the use of Accessible Rich Internet Applications. The tool is particularly useful when developing dynamic content and user interface controls based on Semantic HTML, JavaScript, or other technologies. Without WAI-ARIA, some users with disabilities, particularly those who depend on screen readers and those who are unable to use a mouse, would not be able to access certain functionality found on Web sites. By defining the means by which functionality can be offered to assistive technology, WAI-ARIA tackles these accessibility issues. Advanced Web applications can be made usable and accessible for people with disabilities with WAI-ARIA.
Website design
Your website’s responsiveness is crucial to enhancing user experience while preventing common SEO mistakes that could harm your Google rankings. And even though Google hasn’t officially acknowledged the importance of responsive web design as a ranking factor, they have frequently hinted at it. Making websites that display correctly on various devices and screen sizes is known as responsive web design (RWD). A website can adapt to any screen size using a responsive design. It eliminates the need to make and maintain two distinct versions of your website, and it is just as easy to use on smartphones as on tablets and desktop computers. Websites with responsive design are also more user-friendly because users can interact with them more easily and share and link to them more frequently.
ALT text for images
If you use images on your website, add alternative text (alt text) that outlines them. The information on the page will still be comprehendible by users who use assistive technology such as dictation software when the image is not accessible. You can include alt text to images in WordPress using your Media Library. Assigning alt tags to images will therefore give users a description of the image so they can understand it when using a screen reader. Additionally, alt tags help you get a better Google SEO ranking.
Use heading hierarchies to organize content
You can make your content easier to read by dividing it into smaller sections. Because of this, structuring the data on your pages with headlines and lists can improve web accessibility. Clear headings can make your pages more accessible for screen readers to read and comprehend. Additionally, it makes it easier for users of assistive technologies to browse your page’s contents and helps with in-page navigation. WordPress advises sticking with a predetermined heading hierarchy that uses one H1 per page (typically for the title) and H2s and H3s for subsegments. It is best to use these headings in the following order: H2s after H1, then H3s, and finally H4s (if necessary). Visitors with cognitive disabilities can benefit from this level of structure and flow as well.
User testing
User testing and feedback allow you to observe, hear, and analyze how users interact with your design, making it easy to determine your target audience’s point of view. You can find out how your product fails to meet the requirements of your target market by conducting user testing. You can see where they become perplexed or impatient from this. In testing a website’s usability, a group of chosen, actual users evaluate the site’s conception and creation. A variety of user interactions are required with the website’s user interface. Testing your website’s usability can help you better understand how your target market may use it.
Create subtitles and transcripts
If you want to incorporate video in your web content, consider including subtitles because these are very helpful for people with hearing loss. For those who have ADHD, subtitles are also beneficial because they provide them with something to concentrate on and make it simpler for them to grasp and enjoy doing. Users already have access to tools that let them automatically add subtitles to their videos on sites like YouTube. However, if you’re making your own videos, kindly add subtitles before publishing them on your website. Another excellent way to guarantee that all viewers will appreciate your website and its content is to offer transcripts and closed captioning for your videos.
Wrap up!
If you were a business owner, you would want your website to have a positive user experience and for visitors to enjoy their time there. People with a positive user experience are happy with their visits and more likely to return. And one way to boost user satisfaction is by making content available to all users, irrespective of their devices or abilities. All the essential elements mentioned above are part of website optimization. So, consider all these crucial factors as you design your website.