Source: W3.org
By ensuring your website and website content is user-friendly with assistive technologies, you can create a much more inclusive and welcoming experience.
Allow Manual Font Adjustment
Manual font adjustment is beneficial for web users of all ages with vision impairments. Over 7 million Americans are blind or have low vision. Allowing manual font adjustments will help users easily adjust text size to make it easier to read. 70% of user interface depends on typography – so you should also ensure that your website typography is clear, visible, and easy to read. At a minimum, your font size should be 16 pt. Your font choice should be a well-known source such as Sans-Serif or Serif, that can work well in multiple sizes.
Patch Mobile Apps for Accessibility
Is your mobile app accessible? Creating an accessible experience through your brand’s mobile app is an important, yet often overlooked task. If your brand has a mobile app, think about how you can implement accessibility features that mirror your website’s accessibility experience. Is your mobile app compatible with any screen reading or screen magnification software? Or does it have any accessible functionalities such as GPS and route finding, text-to-speech features, or object recognition? It’s important that your brand is accommodating users with disabilities on every device they use to view your content.
Be Mindful of Design Elements
If you’re involved in brand development, then you know how exciting and important it is to create a website that catches your audience’s eye. After all, website design plays a large role in how your brand conveys its personality. But when choosing your design elements, are you only taking into consideration what matches your branding or design? Design elements such as colors, themes, banners, and more can all impact a user’s experience negatively if they have a disability. For example, if there are parts of your website that use only color to communicate a call-to-action or information, you can run the risk of not communicating your intention correctly to a visitor who is visually impaired or has color blindness.
The Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) recommends website color contrasts to have a ratio of 4:5:1 for standard font-size text. This helps any users who have low vision or are impaired to distinguish between foreground text with background colors. Meeting these color standards with help ensure your website is ADA compliant.
If you have any interactive design elements such as banners, buttons, and links, make sure they are easy to identify. You can do so by changing the appearance of links on mouse hover, keyboard focus, and touch screen activation. Being mindful of the accessibility of your website’s design elements will create a healthy balance between a website that is both functional and aesthetic.
Keep Up with Web Accessibility Standards
Keeping up with web accessibility standards will ensure that your website content can continuously be accessible to all users, no matter what disability they have. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has developed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provides guidelines on how organizations can make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities.
The principles of WCAG are:
- Perceivable: A website being received as perceivable means that your website takes into account all of the senses individuals use when browsing the internet. Your brand needs to ensure that users with any disabilities can perceive all of the content available on your website, with any assistive technologies they choose to use.
- Operable: A website’s operability revolves around how your users are browsing the internet. Some users may have visual impairments, motor difficulties, or hearing impairments which all require them to access the web with different tools. By focusing on good website navigation, clear error trigger messages, and avoiding time limits for users, you can make your website more operable and up-to-standard.
- Understandable: Can all users easily understand the content on your website? Making your website understandable with clear communication and accessible website functionalities will help meet this principle.
- Robust: Having a robust website means that it’s compatible with different third-party technologies, such as screen readers and web browsers, as well as meeting HTML and CSS standards. This will help website visitors easily process your content no matter what technologies they are using.
Here is an in-depth guide that covers how your brand can meet the needs of users with disabilities, as well as the WCAG standards.
Users with disabilities will not choose to purchase from a business that has inaccessible content, especially when there are hundreds of other brands that are ADA-compliant. By addressing web accessibility, your business can reach a much larger audience that holds billions in purchasing power and see an increase in revenue.
Keeping accessibility should remain top of mind when your business takes on any new web projects or marketing initiatives. With Business Evaluation Services your business can simultaneously optimize your online presence and reach new audiences with Local Pages. Our Local Pages meet accessibility standards and guidelines, offer compatibility with assistive technologies, and come complete with user-friendly features such as a geo-locator and optimized landing pages. With Local Pages, your brand can create an ADA-friendly, SEO optimized user experience that ensures every consumer can find you at any moment.
If you’re interested in learning more about how your business can leverage Local Pages to drive online traffic, chat with us today.