Web accessibility can be easily overlooked when creating a website, yet it is an integral part of the website building process.
What is website accessibility?
The web should be designed for all people, this means it should cater for a large range of people considering their locations, abilities, software and hardware. It should be accessable to everyone regardless of an individual’s hearing, sight or other disabilities.
Through good website, tool and application design the Web can remove barriers of communication and allow inclusivity for all individuals.
Therefore accessibility means that the web is designed so that a large range of people with disabilities can use it.
The primary and crucial actions users should be able to carry out include being able to:
- Perceive
- Understand
- Navigate
- Interact
- Contribute
Why is web accessibility so important
By optimising and making your site more inclusive, you expand your potential audience because more users can access and use your site. Designing with accessibility in mind also means a better user experience overall. More satisfied users that can easily access key content and take the required actions conveniently, meanining higher conversion rates. This can put your website a step ahead of competing sites who have not taken the same steps.
How to make your website more accessible
Ensuring your site is keyboard friendly
Keyboard navigation is frequently used with assistive technologies to navigate around the page. This means your site should be navigable via keyboard, this means links, menus and pages should be accessible via keyboard. The tab key is usually used to navigate between different sections and parts of the page this is also a good way to test if your site can be primarily navigated with a keyboard.
Using alt text for images
Alt text also known as alternative tags or alt attributes is text that can be read by a screen reader for visually impaired individuals. Therefore this should include a description that explains what the iameg shows for someone that could not see it. Furthermore this gives context to users that may otherwise not take notice of the image.
Carefully choosing colours
Strategically picking contrasting colours is important to enable all users to see and differentiate between sections on the site. Colour blindness is on a spectrum which means that it is unique to each individual, as it is on a spectrum the colours you choose should give a high enough contrast to be clear and legible.
Clashing colours should also be avoided as they can cause eye strain and headaches not to mention a harsh and unattractive website. Using lighter colours as the background and darker colours for the foreground is recommended.