There are many design fashions to be aware of when building your brand’s website. A common question asked by most people is about its appearance that how it looks, or how could it convert visitors into customers. But no one asks, is your website ADA compliant? If not, what are the reason to have it?
First thing first, ADA is the Americans with Disability Act which was developed in 1990 to ensure that all people must be given equal opportunities including the disabled ones. The disabilities may be visual impairment, hearing disorder, or any physical capacities.
The rules are basically made for all the businesses that serve the public including building and website both. Thus, commercial buildings have almost all the facilities for handicapped people, what about your brand website? Is it ADA compliant? For this, the Official Standards of Website Accessibility may help you in checking your website accessibilities. In addition, here are a few benefits for having an ADA compliant website:
Expanding Your Target Audience
The figure says, there are 50 million people with disabilities in the U.S that implies there are 19% of this country has a disability. Thus, if your website is not ADA compliant then you are somewhere losing some potential users. The consequences are clear, they will opt for your competitor’s website for easy navigation because your website is not designed for them to deliver your services.
Improve Your SEO Efforts
The key element of Web content Accessibility Guidelines is the accessibility to screen readers, and these readers crawl your website that meets the WCAG, it will likely appeal to users, search engines, and screen readers. That eventually improves your SEO results. For better results, meta-tagging, alternative image text, video transcripts work best.
Hike Your Reputation
Being ADA compliant, your website is targeting more customers by which you are not only gaining more traffic on your website, side by side, you are gaining their trust as well as they also know how valuable they are to your business. This is one of a way to increase visitors as a way of recommendation. After visiting a couple of websites, a happy user surely will share their experience with their connections.
Overall Better Website Usability
A website with better navigation, good operable, designed by following the WCAG will offer easy to comprehend that will allow everyone to find what they are looking for. Thus, it is good for the disabled and non-disabled ones.
Win Over Penalties
Having an ADA compliant website, save you from penalties that several businesses like Foot Locker, Brooks Brothers, Kylie Jenner that have been sued for the lack of ADA compliant websites.
For better understanding, below are the points given for a more inclusive site and adopting the WCAG:
Analyze Your Current Site
ADA compliant website must meet the standards within these four categories:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
Make sure your website meets all the above requirements. Use the ADA guidelines as a starting point to create a blueprint for your own site.
Choose the Right Graphics
Carefully selection of graphics is an important part of accessible websites. The graphics must not be flashy more than three times per second. Besides, graphics should also have a description or caption with a read-aloud feature for a better understanding of visually impaired.
Alt-Text And Readable Font
Ensure to provide alt text and readable fonts to all the images in your code. Alt-text allows site readers to describe your image audibly.
Logical Website Features
Making everything easy to access is the key to a website. For example, the color combination and the color of the text must be easy to read. Also, putting a sign of “X” clearly on the upper corner of the pop-up to show how to close the window. A website must deliver clear information about what the user wants to gain.
Include Standard HTML Tags
The basic requirement is the code should be readable by an assistive reader. Also, the code must use standard HTML tags. The complex image documents can’t be understood by software that reads text aloud for visually impaired website users.
Friendly Keyboard And Pause
Not all users are able to interact with a touchscreen or a grip mouse. For instance, the reader must be able to pause content or slow down automatic scrolling/slideshow movements. Plus, eliminating videos that autoplay and have a time limit add more accessibility ease. Also, make sure that all video interactions and pausing should be completed using keyboard functions.
Remain Up to Date With Compliant Changes
Updating knowledge being in business is good for both point of views – business and consumers. Don’t forget ADA needs are ongoing. So, gain knowledge as much you can and give equal importance to every customer.
Overall, we have seen there are a lot of benefits of having an ADA compliant website that is good for the sake of easy accessibility as well as better business. In addition, having an ADA compliant website gives you more than what you think, a better accessible website with better results in point of SEO as well as building customer’s trust over you and your business.
For assistance, To Be ADA Compliant is one place that provides the best website audit for the website and design according to the guidelines to save your business hit by penalties. Make your business ADA compliant now and increase the sales along with a hike in visitors on the website with To Be ADA Compliant assistance.