Discover actionable steps to make your website more inclusive, expanding its reach to a diverse audience.
Uncover 14 essential steps to enhance your website’s accessibility, promoting inclusivity for a broader audience interaction.
Recognizing the Accessibility Challenge
When the internet was conceived, its purpose was to provide equal access to information and eliminate communication barriers. However, over a billion people worldwide (approximately 15% of the population) still face challenges in accessing the web due to disabilities. With global aging and medical advancements increasing the lifespan of individuals with disabilities, the accessibility gap continues to widen.
Common Impairments and Assistive Technologies
Some prevalent impairments affecting web usage include visual, hearing, neurological, physical, and mental impairments. Various assistive technologies, such as screen readers and puff-and-sip systems, help individuals overcome these challenges. Web accessibility extends beyond disabilities, benefiting users with different devices, temporary disabilities, situational limitations, or limited bandwidth.
Why Prioritize Accessibility?
Addressing accessibility concerns provides practical benefits:
- Enhances Brand Voice: Demonstrates commitment to inclusion, making your website appealing to clients who value accessibility.
- Expands Market Outreach: Taps into an often overlooked market, ensuring that design serves all consumers, potentially gaining loyal users or customers.
- Minimizes Legal Risk: Legal requirements in many countries make accessibility essential to avoid discrimination lawsuits.
- Spurs Innovation: Solving accessibility challenges often leads to innovations that enhance usability for all users.
Checklist: 14 Steps for Web Accessibility
Based on the Web Accessibility Guidelines, follow these steps to ensure your website is accessible:
- Enable Alt Tags for Images: Provide descriptive alt tags for images to aid visually impaired users.
- Avoid Autoplay: Disable autoplay content to prevent barriers for users with cognitive impairments or using screen readers.
- Enable Controls for Multimedia Files: Use accessible media players with user interfaces suitable for different interfaces.
- Provide Captions for Multimedia Files: Include text versions like subtitles for audio content, ensuring accessibility for users with hearing impairments.
- Follow a Strict Outline Hierarchy with Headlines: Maintain a logical structure in heading levels to aid screen readers and users in navigation.
- Avoid Using Images for Text: Ensure text remains legible when images are scaled up, considering users with impaired vision.
- Allow Zoom Without Affecting Layout: Enable browser text enlargement without compromising layout, accommodating users with impaired vision.
- Ensure High Contrast Between Objects and Background: Optimize color contrast for users with color blindness, enhancing legibility.
- Do Not Use Color as a Sole Conveyance of Information: Avoid relying solely on color to convey information, considering users with color vision deficiencies.
- Avoid Rapidly Flashing Animations and Video: Minimize the risk of triggering seizures by limiting the speed of flashing or blinking content.
- Provide Names for All Fields in Forms: Ensure forms are intuitive, with clear instructions and cues for error recovery.
- Include Descriptive Titles for Links: Make internal page titles brief and descriptive for users navigating with screen readers.
- Ensure Document Links Include Type and Size: Clearly state document types and sizes for linked documents to assist users on slow connections.
- Design a Cohesive and Easy Navigation: Verify keyboard navigation, ensuring accessibility for users who may not use a mouse.
Crafting Your Accessible Website
Web accessibility is an evolving field, and this checklist provides fundamental solutions for refining your website. Understand the challenges faced by others, practice empathy in design and development, and continually stay informed about accessibility standards.