Web accessibility helps people with disabilities navigate a website more easily. Not only does web accessibility make for a more equitable digital landscape, but its almost always better for your SEO. Consider the following types of accessibility needs:
- Visual Impairment. Users with permanent of temporary blindness, low vision, and color blindness may use screen magnifying software or rely on screen readers, such as JAWS and NVDA, to read digital text aloud and describe images on the web.
- Hearing Impairment. Users with hearing loss may require transcripts or subtitles to access and interact with web content.
- Motor Impairment. Users with limited fine motor control may use customized devices to navigate web content, such as a head pointer, speech recogntion, or mouth sticks.
- Cognitive Impairment. Users with learning disabilities may benefit from consistent layout and navigation, clear copy, and video content.
There are a number of guidelines to help measure your web accessibility, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and the Accessible Rich Internet Applications suite of web standards. Here are some top-level considerations for your design and development team:
- Alt text is imperative to make images accessible to users with screen readers.
- Provide alternative adaptations of your multimedia, so users can access your message in a variety of modes.
- Ensure that your website is fully navigable by keyboard.
- Search boxes, site maps, and all site structures should have logical and intuitive navigation.
- Use high color contrast (min: 4.5:1 for normal-size text) and provide the option to change the color combination in the web browser.
- Make your forms accessible for assistive technology by labeling the fields you want users to click on or type in.
- Limit moving, flashing, and blinking content. Allow users to adjust or turn off these features in order to process information.
- Make your text zoomable without affecting the rest of the content.
Get the full download on Web Accessibility and related resources at Hostinger.
