Which Web Accessibility Guidelines Must Be Followed for Your Website?

There are tons of factors that you have to take into account when creating a website. Website accessibility is one of them. There are specific guidelines to follow to make a website accessible to all users. You might hire a web accessibility company to follow the procedures required for ADA compliance.

So, you might wonder how to follow the web accessibility guidelines on your website. This article will help you in this regard.

The Principles Of Website Accessibility Guideline

The WCAG’s initial edition wasn’t published until 2008. However, website accessibility guidelines have existed for nearly as long as the web. The WCAG 2.0 specification outlines these four guidelines for ensuring ADA compliance on your website:

Perceivable

The perceivable principle means that users must be able to understand content by using their senses (hearing, sight, or touch). Some people could experience difficulties using any of these senses. Thus, they need technology to help them navigate the website. For instance, adding ALT tags on photos might help site visitors explain the picture to the consumer.

Operable

The operable principle discusses how people use the internet to browse. Some users use a keyboard rather than a mouse while navigating a website. So, one must ensure that users can accomplish all functions (such as filling out forms, browsing, etc.) using just a keyboard when optimizing a website for optimal operability.

Thanks to this, users can navigate through options, tab forms, and links and use keyboard shortcuts. The crucial lesson from this rule is that one user may access an area of the website just with a keyboard. And they must also be capable of leaving that section solely with a keyboard.

Understandable

The content on your website must use precise wording to guarantee that it is understandable. For assistive devices to correctly deliver the material to users, they must comprehend all terms on your website.

So, avoid using odd or irregular functions to ensure that site readers can effectively communicate your information to users. It will be highly challenging for assistive technology devices to share these activities if the website keeps refreshing and changing content frequently.

Robust

The website must comply with the “robust” criteria too. All your materials should be consistently accessible across the broadest range of assistive technology. However, it considers current and expected future technological advancements. So, it is one of the most challenging principles.

How To Follow Website Accessibility Guidelines?

There are several steps to ensure that your website follows the web accessibility guidelines. The following are some of the ways to follow:

Include Non-text Alternatives

To ensure ADA web design, one may require text descriptions for every non-text information to explain its content to viewers who are blind. It generally refers to visual material, including emoticons, CAPTCHAs, and ASCII art.

Image alt text, sometimes referred to as alternative text, is the most popular way to explain photos. It is a brief explanation appended to the image’s HTML code that describes what it symbolizes. Consider how you would explain the picture to a person in the chat while writing the alt text.

Give Viewers A Variety Of Ways To Consume Media Content

We refer to sound-visual files as time-based content. Since any music or video on your website was probably pre-recorded, you must upload them with other file types. Your visitors with auditory or vision impairment will be able to view the material thanks to these formats.

Produce Material That One May Watch On Several Platforms

The 1.4 guidelines of the WCAG relate to the organization of pages and connections between components. To ensure accessible website development, we can use proper HTML code while coding for the website, which might help eliminate some of the issues. We can quickly and easily implement appropriate HTML code into websites using the WYSIWYG editor.

Allow Users To Access Every Function With Keyboards

Not every user can operate a mouse, and therefore, a website’s functions should be accessible through the keyboard. There are a variety of people that have trouble using a mouse. People that have Parkinson’s disease have issues with fine motor skills and are unable to use a mouse. People with muscular spasms and strained hands often have a hard time using a mouse.

Assist In Case The User Commits Mistakes

Everybody occasionally has to fill out forms on web pages, and we often make mistakes. We can prevent or fix users’ errors by providing filling-out-form tips and detailed messages about the error. It will be a great way to make sure of web accessibility remediation.

Conclusion

By now, you should have a clear understanding of the guidelines for web accessibility and how to follow them. However, a professional may only follow the standards correctly. So, if you’re considering hiring a web accessibility company, don’t hesitate to contact ADA for Web.

We will ensure that your website follows all the principles of website accessibility. Thanks for reading through.

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