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How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

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How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

Read time 12 min read
How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

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The World Wide Web was engineered to provide mobile accessibility to everyone regardless of country of origin, financial profile, language, computer ability or disability. This function has become increasingly important in the age of coronavirus business closings and enforced isolation. Guidelines for accessible and usable sites improve website functionality for everyone.

In the United States, federal website accessibility guidelines apply to commercial, educational and nonprofit websites. Some accessibility tools and technologies are provided by your web host, but you should verify that your website is covered by the necessary resources. If you host your own website on a server, it’s important to understand your responsibilities.

Talk to your web developer or in-house IT professional about your compliance to the ADA and WCAG guidelines. Fortunately, making your website accessible to everyone expands your sales opportunities, so upgrading your site is an investment in the future. 

Take a look at some of these sobering statistics:

  • 19.9 million (8.2%) have difficulty lifting or grasping. This could, for example, impact their use of a mouse or keyboard.
  • 15.2 million (6.3%) have a cognitive, mental, or emotional impairment.
  • 8.1 million (3.3%) have a vision impairment. These people might rely on a screen magnifier or a screen reader, or might have a form of color blindness.
  • 7.6 million (3.1%) have a hearing impairment. They might rely on transcripts and / or captions for audio and video media.

Interactive Accessibility

What Are the Requirements for Web Accessibility?

An accessible website is one that makes it possible for people with functional disabilities to perceive, navigate and interact with website content and applications. Disabilities include those with auditory, neurological, cognitive, physical, visual and speech impairments in varying degrees.

Advanced tools can help the ever-increasing number of baby boomers who require visual aids, voice-activated navigation, enhanced sound and other assistive technologies. Unfortunately, the subset of people needing accessibility tools is climbing steadily because baby boomers are aging into retirement, people are living longer and older people are learning about digital technology and becoming dependent on it. The list of people who rely on web accessibility tools includes:

  • Patients recuperating from an illness, injury or surgery
  • Aging seniors who lose some of their physical skills as they age
  • People with temporary disabilities like a broken arm
  • People with situational problems such as not being able to see well in bright light
  • People with slow internet connections or limited bandwidth who can’t download files or complete online transactions

As a business owner, you can’t ignore the legal aspects of web accessibility, and good business practices include making your website available to a larger group of potential customers. Many people with disabilities rely on online ordering for every type of service possible, and that trend has only increased because of coronavirus fears.

How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

Accessible Website Examples as a Template for Your Website

Accessible website examples include the following best practices for your website:

  1. Don’t use color for navigation because many people have different degrees of color-blindness.
  2. Provide extensive descriptions of photos and images that can be read by Google or Apple assistant applications.
  3. Include Alt text in markup coding.
  4. Provide written transcripts of audio information and in-sync captioning.
  5. Provide written transcripts of podcasts, video content and audio applications.
  6. Give customers the option of skipping automated navigation.
  7. Test your website for 508 compliance.
  8. If you have a video on your site, you must provide visual access to the audio information through in-sync captioning.
  9. If it’s necessary to create a secondary channel for disabled users, keep your audience’s feelings in mind by not treating the channel as a “secondary” resource.

You should reach out to disabled customers and attempt to provide them the best possible user experience as you would with any customer. Best practices are everyday benefits that you can offer customers. Some of the more complex issues are covered in the following section.

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Accessibility Design Guidelines

The World Wide Web Consortium, known as W3C, implements design guidelines for greater access to make website resources available for the greatest possible number of people. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, known as WCAG, have become the international standard of accessibility for website owners, web developers and web hosting companies. WCAG 2.1 is the most current version of the guidelines. Compliant websites must meet the following standards of performance:

  • No use of color for navigational directions.
  • Using a strong contrast ratio to make images easier to see and read.
  • Providing clear, prominent descriptions of forms outside the form so readers can pick up the information
  • Giving people audio and visual warnings about errors and omissions, and making it easy for people to correct their mistakes
  • Providing consistent navigational instructions and leaving obvious breadcrumbs to follow
  • Providing navigation alternatives and cues for those who can’t use a mouse and those who experience failure of their computer mouse
  • Monitoring the designs of both desktop and mobile devices — such as placing important copy in one of two columns and providing secondary content through clearly marked links and icons
  • Keeping headings and spacing simple and consistent to improve recognition of headlines, captions, body text, graphics, etc
  • Providing media alternatives for disabled users like transcripts and text versions of complex graphics.
  • Giving your users control options for features like carousels, sliders and autoplaying videos because many people don’t read or assimilate information quickly enough

One of the most basic strategies for any website is to test the display of content on different mobile devices and browsers, and these tests should be combined with tests for accessibility. For example, notice the difference between these two designs:

How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

What Are the Risks of Noncompliance with Accessibility Guidelines?

Many small business owners can get by without installing web accessibility aids because there are only a few enforcement vehicles used by local, state or federal authorities. That could rapidly change, and any business is vulnerable to a lawsuit using existing laws and regulations as the basis for legal action. In the United States and other countries, stricter regulations are becoming more common. According to an article posted at commonlook.com, the relevant U.S. laws and regulations that already apply include: [1]

  • Section 508 criteria for accessibility that are part of an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which requires web technology based WCAG guidelines
  • The Americans with Disabilities Act, known as ADA, which impacts the broadest group of business owners and organizations.\
  • Title III of the ADA , which is now being enforced by the Department of Justice to ensure accessibility at “places of public accommodation,” which are now identified as websites
  • WCAG 2.0 that serves as the international standard for accessibility of web content in all its forms
  • Adoption of WCAG 2.0 by Australia, Canada and the European Union, which puts pressure on United States to do the same

The ADA is not a forgiving set of regulations but a strong vehicle for supporting disabled people’s rights. You don’t have to employ more than 15 people to be subject to ADA law — it applies to every business, but the ADA is mostly used to provide the legal backup for legal action. However, current circumstances make it more likely that the ADA will start pursuing these cases actively. Take a look at these statistics:

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How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

(Image credit: getadaaccessible.com)

The benefits of accessible web design and ADA Compliance include a wider range of customers and greater customer satisfaction. Disabled customers show great loyalty to businesses that make it easy for them to interact online. You can avoid the prospect of legal challenges and lawsuits while doing the right thing morally, ethically and empathetically. 

Minimal Accessibility Requirements for Your Online Business

The coronavirus relief efforts included closing schools and offering students online classes. According to an article posted at searchenginejournal.com, offering classes online revealed the woefully inadequate design of teaching websites and software. Even teachers and children who were not disabled struggled to understand and comprehend the website lessons, and these problems became major stumbling blocks for disabled kids.

The situation resulted in an unprecedented number of ADA-based lawsuits and complaints. It’s important to realize that these cases are likely to open the floodgates for complaints about accessibility. That’s why it’s important to talk to your web host and developer to find out what you need to do for compliance with ADA and the latest version of WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

California Consumer Privacy Act’s Provision for Web Accessibility

The state of California recently passed the California Consumer Privacy Act, known as CCPA, that has strict regulations enforcing accessibility for disabled persons. The state’s Attorney General ordered enforcement to start on July 1, 2020. Penalties for noncompliance can result in fines up to $7,500 for each instance of non-compliance.

If you sell products in California, you might be charged with violating state regulations. The same is true for selling products and services in other countries, which is why it’s important to make your website compliant with WCAG 2.1, which is the current international standard accepted by most countries.

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Business Case for Accessibility

No matter what kind of business or organization runs a website, there are goals that the website is designed to promote. Even though there are minor differences between e-commerce companies and nonprofit organizations, both pursue financial goals to keep their organizations funded and in the black.

Every website owner must examine the business case for making critical changes. Accessibility is a major change of focus for some organizations, so it’s essential to examine the financial effect of funding major changes in the website’s structure and operating details.

According to www.w3.org, there is a strong business case for enhancing a website’s usability for a broad cross-section of the public. The business case might come down to the benefits of preventing fines and legal actions, but most organizations also benefit from expanding the number of potential users. Educational and nonprofit companies also benefit from stronger brand enhancement.

A proper analysis must weigh the dangers of inaction, and in the current climate generated by the coronavirus relief measures, those dangers appear to be immediate threats. Isolated people discover the limits and noncompliance of many online companies as they order more staples and luxury goods online.

Organizations that work to stay on top of WCAG 2 and ADA compliance tend to be more innovative, respected and successful than companies that fail to meet the global pressure to comply with accessibility best practices. One Fortune 500 study found that the best-performing companies included accessibility as an inherent part of their diversity strategy. Some of the benefits of accessible website design include:

  • Integrating accessibility technology removes social, digital and architectural barriers that also stifle creativity and innovation.
  • Accessibility integration encourages flexible, agile thinking in product design and triggers creative ideas for new consumer services
  • The use of screen alternatives promotes more human interaction.
  • Advanced technology used in accessibility applications can increase website usability for all users.

This is what that could look like for your website:

How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

(Image credit: morweb.org)

Using the Latest Tools and Resources for Compliance

It’s important to keep accessibility in mind as a permanent concern. Recent innovations for promoting usability and accessibility in web design include more advanced screen readers, personal assistants and assistive tech to explain complex content, WordPress recently updated WordPress Core to be more accessible to disabled users.

Keeping your website up-to-date and accessible involves monitoring all the areas of your website with special attention to these areas:

  • Forms and digital signatures
  • Text layouts, fonts color contrasts and distractions
  • PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and Docs
  • Page design and organization
  • Navigation and links
  • Maps, graphs and infographics
  • Images, sliders and galleries
  • Tables and frames
  • Videos, audio and podcasts

Many practices that promote accessibility also support SEO. These include heading tags, alt text and intuitive information architecture. One of the trouble spots involves the intense focus on mobile phones and apps. Mobile designs often ignore disabilities because many disabled people can’t use phones to access the internet. The small screens are unsuitable for many assistive technologies.

Accessibility and Usability Features Commonly Overlooked

Some web usability standards get overlooked. Sometimes, accessibility ideas for making interaction easier have unintended effects. For example, putting the brand name at the top of each page seems beneficial, but it makes pages hard to identify because the user only sees the brand name on every tab. The following are some of the best practices for accessibility and usability that are commonly overlooked:

  1. Links Need to Be Identified: Links can go unnoticed by visually impaired users. Links and link text must be easy for screen readers to find.
  2. PDFs: All PDFs must be easily accessible by readers in the correct reading order with alt text and tables included. You can remediate inaccessible PDFs with the Adobe accessibility tool.
  3. Differentiate Between Links and Text: Links and text must be specified for readers.
  4. Don’t Duplicate Text for Alt Text: It’s easy to duplicate the text for an image link when preparing alternative text. Users don’t want to hear multiple repetitions of identical text. Here is an example via slideshare.net:

How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

  1. Heading HTML: Skipping some heading levels is a common mistake, but using the proper order is a necessary evil to keep things properly structured for disabled users.
  2. Programming Language: Most developers use CSS, Javascript, ARIA and HTML5 to program websites that meet WCAG guidelines.
  3. Critical Areas for Accessibility: Some of the strongest aids for usability and accessibility in web design include simple features like magnification, captions, brightness settings and transcriptions of audio.
  4. Accessibility Testing: Many website owners don’t test their accessibility features, but testing is critical.

More than 2.2 Billion People Suffer Visual Impairment

Providing tools for the visually impaired includes a vast audience that’s far larger than you realize. The World Health Organization reports that 2.2 billion people have some form of visual impairment according to a report posted at searchenginejournal.com. People of all ages and demographic profiles suffer from color-blindness, glaucoma, difficulties reading small print and the classic problems of being shortsighted or farsighted. All these visual difficulties make it hard to see various kinds of computer screens.

A study conducted by Alexa revealed that 98.1 percent of home pages violated WCAG 2 guidelines. Interior pages didn’t fare much better — 97.8 percent of the sites had at least one interior-page violation. A shocking average of 60.9 errors were reported on home pages, and an average of 53 errors were found on interior pages.

Wrapping Your Pizza for Underwater Delivery

The title is a joke illustrating the frustration that some business owners experience about ever-increasing regulations and red tape. Online sales represent an incredible opportunity for global sales and marketing, and reasonable business owners eventually accept the need for greater accessibility so that disabled people have equal opportunities for using the internet and web applications that meet federal website accessibility guidelines.

It’s certainly not all bad news. You can increase conversions and nurture a loyal segment of customers by embracing inclusive accessibility design guidelines. Website owners spend a fortune on SEO, so it makes sense to spend a little to meet the guidelines for accessible and usable sites. Meeting web usability standards attracts loyal and long-term customers who may have a disability — regardless of whether it’s temporary, permanent or the result of aging in place. 

Diib®: Become ADA Compliant and Accessible Today!

Diib user dashboard is ADA compliant and accessible to all. Not only that, but our custom alerts and objectives can help YOU learn where your accessibility weaknesses may be and give you actionable insights to fix them. Here are some of the features you will also find helpful:

  • Bounce rate monitoring
  • Post performance
  • Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
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FAQ’s

In the IT field, products that are specifically designed and marketed as universally accessible are able to be used by a wide range of people, including those with physical and mental disabilities. These are usually designed to minimize the need for other technology that can assist.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a system of rules developed through the W3C process, in cooperation with individuals and organizations worldwide. These guidelines provide a standard for web accessible content so that the needs of specific individuals, groups or organizations are met.

The WCAG, discussed above, are divided into 4 main principles or categories. These go by the acronym POUR: Perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Check out this graphic:

How to Make Your Website Accessible For Everyone

This is a large, on-screen menu designed to help you control your android device. It gives you control of gestures, hardware buttons, navigation and more.

This essentially means those people with disabilities of any kind can use a product. It makes the interface more easily understood; both visually and mechanically. It can also make the interface more situational friendly. Meaning, those without high speed access, have older PC’s or using a mobile device ect.

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Daniel Urmann

Author Bio:

Daniel Urmann is the co-founder of Diib.com. Over the past 17 years Daniel has helped thousands of business grow online through SEO, social media, and paid advertising. Today, Diib helps over 150,000 business globally grow online with their SaaS offerings. Daniel’s interest include SMB analytics, big data, predictive analytics, enterprise and SMB search engine optimization (SEO), CRO optimization, social media advertising, A/B testing, programatic and geo-targeting, PPC, and e-commerce. He holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) focused in Finance and E-commerce from Cornell University – S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management.

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