Website accessibility is a term used to describe whether a website is received well by those of all abilities and disabilities. If someone is coming to your website and their vision is impaired, and you want that person to have a good experience, you have to follow website accessibility best practices.
For those who struggle with their sight, the size of the text and the color and type of font you use matters. Those who are blind often require a screen reader to help them to navigate your website. People with auditory issues need subtitles. These are all just small examples of accessibility that you could be considering for your website.
How To Make Your Website More Accessible
You need to have a website that delivers for all no matter their ability or disability, and we’ve got some tips to help you to live up to website accessibility best practices and create something that works for all.
The Layout
1.3 billion people around the world are dealing with sight issues, and to make life easier for them you should consider how to make your site easier to navigate. This may involve changes to the layout, color scheme, and fonts. Additionally, for those utilizing a browser extension, you may want to add alt text to your images that describe the content of each image.
Concise Language & Structure
People have varying levels of reading ability and understanding, and while English is a common global language, it’s not always the language that people can understand. If you do a significant amount of business in a country with a different common language, consider translating your pages to make your site more accessible to those visitors.
Easy Data Entry
You want to ensure that those with limited dexterity are able to input data on your website with ease. All websites have forms that customers need to fill out. Adding voice input can help those with limited functionality in their hands and fingers more easily enter in their info.
Mobile Optimization
Mobile is not the predominant way people access the Internet, and believe it or not, a key part of accessibility is ensuring that your website renders correctly, and quickly, on mobile. We’ve all seen sites that look decent on a large screen, only to be completely unnavigable on mobile. Avoid this by making your next website redesign one that utilizes fully responsive technology. Additionally, because mobile data can often be spotty, do whatever you can to “lighten up” the mobile version of your site so that it loads quickly even on a slow connection.
We hope these tips help you think about how to make your site more accessible. For our part, with your CanSpace Solutions hosting account, we give you a number of tools that make it easy to update and optimize your site!
