Website Accessibility Can Make Your Company a Leader

What is Website Accessibility?

Website accessibility refers to the configuration of online products, services, and facilities in a way that is usable and navigable for everyone, including those with hearing, vision, motor, or cognitive impaired conditions. A company’s website should be accessible by those who have either a temporary or permanent impairment or disability. The visually impaired should be able to read through screen readers, the deaf should be able stay up to date with the current events through indexed transcripts, and the mute can join the online discussion through blogs and comments.

Any website design without website accessibility features is considered ineffective as per ADA website accessibility standards.

Website Accessibility Can Make Your Company a Leader

Digital businesses with accessible websites are demonstrating that ethical accessibility practices can help increase brand credibility, and also create more online conversions as you are introduced to a newer target market. Also, you will earn trust by introducing this ethical element into your website.

Benefits of Website Accessibility

There are numerous benefits of making your website accessible not only to disabled but everyone.

It gives you a chance to expand your visitor base,

Helps you to rank higher on search engines,

Improves conversion rates,

Optimizes your overall site’s performance, and

Creates more loyal and satisfied users.

But, there are several components which are required to function together to make your website accessible to everyone.

How to Make your Website Accessible

WCAG international standards for website accessibility were developed to guide companies on how to make their website accessible to all. These guidelines provide instructions on technical specification, techniques, guidelines and resources for accessibility solutions. However, the process is still dependent on web browsers, web technology, authoring tools, and user agents. Some minor tweaks in your websites can really make a difference to make your company a leader.

Here are some of the ways in which you can convert your website to meet the website accessibility standards and showcase your business to everyone.

Creating an Accessibility Guide

Creating an accessibility guideline on your website will allow you to reach target markets that you previously were unable to reach. Doing the right things to grant greater access to your web based content for disabled people will provide your business with new opportunities. When assistive devices make it possible to place orders and ask questions with voice search, or transcription enables deaf persons to read a podcast interview, we reach more people and learn from their direct experiences.

Create a Website Accessibility Statement

You can also create and publish a statement on your website in support of disabled persons which should affirm your intent and commitment to make your website accessible to everyone. Make sure that you write a simple, clear, and understandable statement to show compliance with WCAG standards and make your statement highly visible. It’s also a good idea to provide a clear communication path so that people can reach you easily such as a toll-free number, chat support, contact form, or email address.

Keyboard Input

Consider adopting a keyboard-friendly layout and navigation as many individuals with disabilities rely heavily on assistive devices or adaptive keyboards to navigate through the web.

Alternative Text for Images

Alternative text for images is a simple and effective way to help visually impaired people. When using alt-text screen readers read the alt-text aloud, making it easy to understand the images on your website. It also helps search engines to properly index your image content.

Transcripts for Audio & Video

Transcripts for audio files and videos on your website are beneficial to the deaf and blind population. They often can access the content with the help of Braille or other assistive devices, but available transcripts benefit this population as well.

Design Contact Forms

Create and design your contact forms in easy to understand language with bold colors and large fonts so that these are easily accessed and used by anyone with a disability.

Headers for Content Structure

People who use a screen reader need an organized and structured content and using H1 or H2 headers can help you make your content readable and understandable. Those who use a screen reader might get interrupted with automatic media and navigation, so try to avoid it throughout the structure of your website. Consider adding a "skipping navigation links" button to conveniently redirect the user to important anchor links.

Making your website more accessible brings a positive impact of your company and eliminates discrimination against those with disabilities. Optimizing your website to be fully accessible helps avoid costly litigations, as well as provides practical benefits such as better search engine ranking, better conversion rate, repeated visitors, and more loyal users. So whenever you decide to have a digital presence, ask your web design company to focus on website accessibility to accomplish all of these goals.

Jenson Lowis is an author with a wide experience of IT and new technologies. Has been writing for more than 2 decades about various aspects of new technologies.