- June 27, 2024
- by Christopher
- PHP Development, Web Development, WordPress Development
Before diving into what web accessibility is, we should first understand that the word “accessibility” means.
Wikipedia says, “ Accessibility refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people who experience disabilities.
So we could say web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can:
- perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web
- contribute to the Web
Web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities, for example:
- people using mobile phones, smart watches, smart TVs, and other devices with small screens, or different input modes, etc.
- older people with changing abilities due to ageing
- people with “temporary disabilities” such as a broken arm or lost glasses
- people with “situational limitations” such as in bright sunlight.
- people using a slow Internet connection, or who have limited bandwidth
WHY WEB ACCESSIBILITY IS IMPORTANT
It improves your brand: An accessible website is often one of the easiest ways to do business with many people with disabilities, for instance, people who cannot read print material, people who have difficulty going to a physical store or mall, and others. Having a website that can be accessible by anybody means you are more likely to reach potential clients both able and disable.
Better SEO rankings: The more friendly and accessible your website is the more it’s appreciated by search engines, and in turn giving an edge over your competitors.
Avoid lawsuits: Another important consideration for organizations is that Web accessibility is required by laws and policies in some cases. According to a research conducted in 2018 in the United State of America, there were over 2000 ADA title III website accessibility lawsuit in federal court.
You will be contributing to the society: It is important that your Website can be accessible to everyone in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. An accessible website can help people with disabilities participate more actively in society.
HOW TO ACHIEVE WEB ACCESSIBILITY
Firstly, you will want to check if your website is accessible or not. The best and easiest way to do that is by checking your website status online. Click here to see your website status.
If your website fails the accessibility test or you are not satisfied with your results, you can do the following:
- Use Alt-tags: “Alt tags” or “alt descriptions,” alt text is the written copy that appears in place of an image on a web-page if the image fails to load on a user’s screen. This text helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers and allows the search engines to better crawl and rank your website.
- Use better tables: Adding captions to your table using the cation tag makes it easier to understand by screen readers rather than just writing title of a table in bold letters.
- Use default html tags: Don’t ever mess with default html tags if you want to achieve web accessibility. Use button for button, and not anchor for button.
- Use captions for media: The videos or audio elements on your website, should have captions. Closed captions are very useful not only for accessibility but also for users who may be using your website somewhere where they can’t play audio, such as in a noisy location.
- Use the title tags: Browsers don’t always display the HTML title tag in the webpage body, but it is helpful for screen readers and tabs title. Ensure each of your website’s pages has a descriptive but short title that tells visitors what the page is all about.
What are you waiting for? Make your website accessible today!
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why website accessibility is important for your business. It’s time to make your site accessible. We will conduct a website accessibility audit on your site and discover the smallest stumbling blocks that hamper its accessibility. We will fix all the issues for you in no time. You can also contact us with individual tasks on known website accessibility issues.
