10 Ways To Improve Web Accessibility

Websites are now an integral part of every business. Whether it is a big firm or a new one, digital presence plays a big role in drawing in more customers. Web accessibility directly contributes to a business’s profitability. Keep reading to learn 10 ways to improve web accessibility to ensure better performance and profitability in your organization.

Web accessibility is now more than just a tool to accessorize your websites. With the progression of digital platforms and growing consumer demands, web accessibility has become mandatory. In this article, we will help you navigate through the ways to improve your web accessibility.

10 Important Ways To Improve Web Accessibility

Web accessibility enables the features on your website to assist users of all ranges and demographics. It is a crucial necessity to help people with disabilities and physical restraints to have a user-friendly experience with the website. 10 of the best ways to improve your web accessibility are given below

Using Proper Alt Text For Images

Alt texts provide an easy explanation of the message of an image. It is a vital feature for screen readers. Using alt texts can significantly improve the web accessibility of your website.

Especially with multiple images and infographics, alt texts are an essential tool. It ensures all users, including disabled users, easily understand the message of an image. So, ensure proper alt text for photos to improve web accessibility.

Making Dynamic Content Accessible

Dynamic contents are the contents of a page that can update or revise without refreshing. A website with dynamic content goes through continuous shifts and updates. Web accessibility improves when these contents are easily accessible.

Adding multiple assertive tools to the website allows the dynamic content to be more accessible. So, users of the website will not struggle to find updated or revised information. Thus, your web accessibility will improve.

Accessible Content Management System

An accessible content management system can drastically improve the user experience and overall web accessibility of your websites. Content management systems or CMS are tools that help developers and users to create, manage, edit or collaborate on the content of a website.

Ensure that the CMS of your website checks out the web accessibility criteria. That is, the page layouts, widgets, plugins, themes, and other related aspects must be compatible with web accessibility standards. Hence, your user experience and accessibility will positively improve.

Structured Headers And Sub Points

Correct use of headers and subpoints in a website can significantly improve the website. This helps not only the website’s outlook but also its usability.

Make sure that the important content on your website has the appropriate headers. It should also follow necessary points and sub-points in an organized way. Otherwise, the website becomes too clustered with information to follow through. Hence, structured headers and sub-points are important to improve your web accessibility.

ADA Compliance

ADA compliance is a very important tool to improve your website’s performance. An ADA-compliant website is user-friendly for disabled people and users with other physical restraints.

By making your website ADA compliant, you can ensure disabled people have full access to the services of your website. So, while designing and developing your website, make sure to follow all the ADA compliance checklists. This will boost your website’s accessibility.

Keyboard Friendly

Keeping your website keyboard-friendly is an important feature. Users with motor disabilities rely on the use of a keyboard. So, keyboard accessibility helps these users enjoy the website’s facilities without hassle.

So, make sure that content covering long pages is broken down with “skip” or “jump” options. The functions of tab or arrow keys should also be available on the website. That is, keyboard actions and shortcuts should be present on your website. Thus, it will become more accessible for everyone.

Provide Video Transcript

Video transcripts are an important tool to help different users with disabilities. Additionally, if your website has a collection of various videos and multimedia, a video transcript becomes a necessity.

With the availability of video transcripts, navigating through the contents becomes easier. At the same time, users can go over the content quickly rather than sit through the video. Transcripts for both video and audio can help deaf or blind users too. So, provide video transcripts on your website to improve its accessibility.

Use ARIA Landmarks

Accessible Rich Internet Applications or ARIA landmarks are an important tool for web accessibility. In simple words, these are powerful technical specifications that allow for making semantically defined sections of a page.

With ARIA landmarks, the webpage becomes easier to access by users of assistive technologies. This means that to support the disabled and users with restraints ARIA landmarks are vital. They make the information or content of a website more accessible for all users. Therefore, use ARIA landmarks on your website for better web accessibility.

Provide Sufficient Color Contrast

An underrated tool for web accessibility is the right color contrast. Many people design their websites to their individual preferences. However, the users’ experience and comfort should be a priority while developing the website.

The foreground and background of the website must have adequate color contrast. In addition, the fonts must have a distinct contrast against their background. Otherwise, reading the content becomes tiresome. The color contrast must be soothing and easy on the eyes. This will improve your website’s accessibility.

Avoid Using Tiny Or Difficult Fonts

Similar to color contrast, the correct use of fonts is an important element. Using difficult fonts makes the content inaccessible to the users. Similarly, tiny fonts are also difficult to read or navigate through by the users of the website.

So, while choosing fonts, make sure that they follow the website accessibility checklist. That is, they must be easy to understand and read by different users. This will be vital for improving your website’s accessibility.

Conclusion

Web accessibility is an important tool to improve its performance and productivity. By following these criteria, you can attract a large and diverse pool of customers to grow your business. Contact us if you have any queries or to learn more about website accessibility.

Working on a website can be difficult. Adding new media and updating pages is chore, even though you know your company website needs to evolve and become more accessible to the many users you are trying to reach. Maybe when you first built it, accessibility wasn’t even really discussed. But now you’ve taken a step back, looked at your customer base with a desire to include everyone and you’ve realized just how important it is to make your site accessible. However, the thought of building a robust site that can do all the things you want it to do is overwhelming.

What is Web Accessibility

A practice of designing and coding the website in order to provide complete compatibility in accessing it by people with disabilities. In addition, it is a way to improve search engine optimization only an ADA Compliant Web Designer will help you to make your website Compliant. Is your website compatible? By going through the checklist below, you can get the answer.

Assessing Current Web Pages and Content

The website must include a feature like a navigation link at the top of the page. These links have a bypass mechanism such as a “skip navigation” link. This feature directs screen readers to bypass the row of navigation links and start at the web page content. It is beneficial for people who use screen readers to avoid to listen to all the links each time they jump to a new page.
All the links should be understandable when taken out of the context. For example, images without alternative text and links without worded as “click here”.
All the graphics, maps, images, and other non-text content must provide text alternatives through the alt attribute, a hidden/visible long description.
All the documents posted on the website should available in HTML or another accessible text-based format. It is also applicable to other formats like Portable Document Format (PDF).
The online forms on the website should be structured so assistive technology can identify, describe and operate the controls and inputs. By doing this, people with disabilities can review and submit the forms.
If the website has online forms, the drop-down list should describe the information instead of displaying a response option. For instance, “Your Age” instead of “18-25”.
If the website has data charts and tables, they should be structured so that all data cells are associated with column and row identifiers.
All the video files on the website must have audio descriptions (if necessary). This is for the convenience of blind people or for having a visual impairment disability.
All the video files on the website must have synchronized captions. People with hearing problems or deaf can access these files conveniently.
All the audio files on the website should have synchronized captions to provide access to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
All web pages should be designed so that they can be viewed using visitors’ web browser and operating system settings for color and font.

About Website Accessibility Policy and Procedures

One must have a written policy on website accessibility.
The website accessibility policy must be posted on the website at a location where it can be easily found.
The procedure should be developed to ensure that content is not added to the website until it has been made accessible.
It should be confirmed that the website manager has checked the code and structure of all new web pages before they are posted.
While adding the PDFs to the website, these should be accessible. Also, the text-based versions of the documents should be accessible at the same time as PDF versions.
Make sure that the in-house and contractor staff has received the information about the website accessibility policy and procedure to confirm the website accessibility.
It should be confirmed that in-house and contractor staff has received appropriate training on how to ensure the accessibility of the website.
The website should have a specific written plan if it contains inaccessible content. Also, it should include timeframes in place to make all of the existing web content accessible.
A complete plan to improve website accessibility should be posted along with invited suggestions for improvement.
The homepage should include easily locatable information that includes contact details like telephone number and email address. This is useful for reporting website accessibility problems and requesting accessibility services with information.
A website should have procedures in place to assure a quick response to the visitors with disabilities who have difficulty in accessing information or services available on the website.
Feedback from people who use a variety of assistive technologies is helpful in ensuring website accessibility. So make sure to ask disability groups representing people to provide feedback on the accessibility of your website.
Testing the website using a product available on the internet is helpful, These tools are of free cost and check the accessibility of a website. They may not identify all accessibility issues and flag issues that are not accessibility problems. However, these are, nonetheless, a helpful way to improve website accessibility.

Checklist of Action Items for Improving the Accessibility of a Website

In addition, while considering the above suggestions, the following checklist initially prepared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for Federal Agencies provides further guidelines on ways to make websites more accessible for persons with disabilities.

This practical advice, as well as another checklist, are available at:

Satisfying all of these items does not necessarily mean that a website complies with ADA, but it will improve the website’s accessibility and decrease the risk of litigation. Again, an Expert or Web Accessibility Consulting & Services provider should be engaged to conduct a comprehensive review of your website.

Nothing brings you closer to reality than actually facing it. This is the premise of my latest attempt to spread awareness about Web Accessibility.

For better understand, here is a link in which a practical example is shown to make the websites’ user experience better by following the guidelines. Also, it tells the issues affecting various users on the internet with solutions.

You can make your website ADA compliant in an easy way by consulting the professionals, who can do this job effortlessly. Also, you can get a quick website audit from To Be ADA Compliant that offers complete web accessibility consulting & services in California, USA.

Resource: https://dev.to/chinchang/an-interactive-and-practical-introduction-to-web-accessibility-22o1