How you can improve your Website Accessibility?

Irrespective of software, hardware, location, language, or ability the internet is essentially designed to work for every person. If you have a poorly designed website which do not considers the common challenges then people with incapacities will face several issues and the interaction will suffer. In this kind of situations web accessibility plays a vital role. Let’s learn more about this and also how this will improve your website accessibility.

What is Website Accessibility?

Website accessibility means designing and developing websites, software tools, or technologies in such a way that people with incapacities or disabilities can use all these easily. Its main goal is to aid people perceive, navigate, understand, and interact with web in a better thereby contributing something by themselves.

Web accessibility or website accessibility majorly includes all types of disabilities which are affecting people to access the Web. This comprises auditory, physical, neurological, cognitive, speech, visual, etc. problems. Although, the best practices of website accessibility also helps those who don’t have any disabilities, such as:

• People, who use mobile phones, smart TVs, smart watches or any other device which has smaller screens or different type of input modes.
• Elderly persons generally face change in abilities because of ageing.
• People facing “temporary disability” such as misplaced glasses or having any eye injury or broken hand, etc.
• People facing “situational limitations” such as being in such places where there is bright sunlight affecting visibility or high noises that they are unable listen to audio.
• People having very slow internet connectivity, with limited or expensive bandwidth.

Importance of Website Accessibility

Today web is a crucial resource for almost everything, right from education to employment in all sectors like government, healthcare, commerce, etc. Therefore, it is very essential that your websites is equally accessible to everyone and its opportunities are easily used by people having different abilities.

The truth is the access to information & communications technologies is the Rights of Persons with Disabilities according to the basic human right in the United Nations Convention. But most of the businesses across the globe are charged because they don’t have accessible sites. Therefore, ether you can go for necessary changes to make your website accessible or be ready to face the consequences.

How to make Website more Accessible?

By following the below mentioned points, you can help screen-readers and other similar devices to understand your content. Let’s have a look at the 10 best ways to improvise your website accessibility.

• Try to go for a keyboard-friendly website design which can be easily handled without a mouse.
• Try to ensure easily accessible content for all your web pages mainly websites using dynamic content.
• Try adding ALT tag to all the images of the website.
• Always select the website color combination wisely and perfectly set dark colors against light colors.
• Always structure your website content properly and use headings & subheadings.
• Use design forms for website accessibility using tools.
• For tabular data only use tables.
• Avoid the use of absolute units and use relative sizes to specify the text size.
• Avoid using automatic media and navigation such as carousels and sliders.
• Try creating more accessible content by completely writing the acronyms, and also giving all your links a unique, descriptive names and anchor text.

Benefits of Website Accessibility

The chief objective of every business owner is website traffic generation and then converting them into potential customers. The fact is, only some brands take essential steps to make their website accessible to every person. Though, the mind-set of all business owners may change if they understand the powerful benefits of an accessible website, like:

• Increases search optimisation
• Improves overall user experience
• Makes your brand one which values inclusivity
• Reach greater audiences potentially thereby representing big spending power
• Decrease your legal risk of lawsuit

Your website design must welcome as many people as possible and should not exclude anyone. This will not only help your users but will also benefit you by increasing your website traffic as well as conversions. By creating more accessible website, you will boost your website visibility in online search.

How can we check Website Accessibility?

With website accessibility audit you can effectively identify and resolve all types of issues existing in your website. This will include ineffective translation processes, selecting style over functionality, and failure in fulfilling the governmental accessibility policies.

Website accessibility can be measured with W3C standards which are known as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Others also developed their specific guidelines but they follow Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines. To test your website you can go for manual test or you can use one of different below listed online tools:

• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
• AChecker – Accessibility Checker
• Cynthia Says
• EvalAccess
• Accessibility Valet

Want to improve online reputation for your business or to build online trust and credibility for your brand? Then you at the right place! Build Websites can help you to improve your online reputation; we also offer other important online web related services like website design & development, SEO, SMM, PPC, content marketing, web hosting, etc.

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