It is so easy and cheap to build a website now. There are also many content management platforms offering website-building tools with which anyone can custom design a business website in a matter of hours. However, when it comes to making the website accessible for all, you need to consider the needs of people with disabilities too. This is called accessibility, which is now being mandated through laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act. Any public utility has to be made compliant with the accessibility requirements to ensure that all among the public can access it with ease.
Website accessibility explained by AccessiBe
So, we need to take a step back from the statement made above that building a website is so easy. When it comes to ensuring the accessibility requirements, there are a few things that you need to plan and execute in website building. Even if the design part of a website is simple, incorporating accessibility effectively can be challenging. There are many guidelines for the same by W3C, which the web developers and designers need to follow while building an accessible website. AccessiBe offers many tools to ensure accessibility by following the guidelines and standards. This article will discuss some common ways to ensure website accessibility compliance.
Accessibility tips
- Some people may have difficulty using the mouse as the input device, so ensure that the keyboard navigation is made possible on all pages.
- Ensure that the site is adaptable. It means the users need to control the content easily, navigate through the pages easily, and that the site has made use of style sheets effectively.
- Ensure that the users have a great accessible experience when browsing through the website content across the browsers, devices, and operating systems.
- Ensure responsiveness of the website while being viewed on different screens such as the computer monitor, mobile phone, TV screen, etc.
- Ensure that the alternative text is provided for all types of multimedia content so that the blink people can understand what it is all about.
- Try to use descriptive text for the content. It includes alt text for graphic content.
- Make sure that there is a text transcript of the audio/video content. The deaf people can view the content and should be able to read through the transcript to understand the content.
- Don’t use colors or images alone to share information or show changes in the states of elements. There should be ways to support the color blinded people through other cues like patterns, styles, audio commands, etc.
- Make use of easy modes of controlling the content, website navigation, and accessible use of style sheets.
- Make the webs page text clear and concise. Ensure that there are no grammatical errors on the page and no typo errors to confuse the screen readers.
- Avoid the text-only links like simply “click here” on the link. Try to make descriptive and meaningful links to state the purpose so that the screen readers can understand and interpret it well.
- Have a welcoming website for all. Ensure that you offer the visual appeal without any overwhelming elements, page clutter with text and graphics, or distracting elements on the page.
- Avoid any table layouts. If you are using tables, make sure there is a caption for each table.
Remember these fundamental tips to ensure accessibility while designing your website. Also, make use of the tools offered by AccessiBe to audit and ensure ADA compliance of your web pages.