What is website accessibility?
Designing your website to be barrier-free for individuals with impairments is known as website accessibility. This includes those with vision, hearing, mouse, reading and comprehension, or motor skill issues.
It’s also important to make the site simple to use for all visitors, including those who are older, have vision issues, or have “situational” constraints. For instance, they might not be able to hear noises if they are in an open office.
Common challenges to accessibility on websites
Frequently, individuals who “usually” use a website fail to consider potential barriers that might prevent others from using it. Although not comprehensive, this list touches on some typical obstacles:
—Tiny or very close-together buttons.
—Unreadable text or text that disappears into the background (lack of contrast).
—A lengthy, intricate menu. To go around on your website using a keyboard, a user must manually tab through each page.
—Directions that solely rely on color or images, such as “Press the red button,” will be challenging for colorblind people.
—A picture or an infographic that conceals crucial information. This is not “visible” to someone using a text-to-voice reader.
—Content that is audio or video without subtitles or a transcript.
—Providing a phone number as the only means of getting in touch with you.
How do I make my website more accessible?
1. Offer an alternative to the audio and visual components.
Your website might be “read” by users of screen readers or other assistive devices. Include a transcript or captions if there is significant information hidden in an infographic, a table, or a video.
2. Adapt the colors and contrast on your website.
To make your writing easier to read, choose colors that differ enough from one another. Choose black writing on a bright background to be safe. More advice on writing understandable website text is provided below.
3. Make room for big, visible buttons.
Keep the writing big and clear, and give the buttons adequate space so they’re easy to press. Avoid placing two crucial buttons next to one another since selecting the incorrect one might be quite aggravating.
4. Add alt text to your images
An image’s “alt text” is a brief sentence that defines what the image contains. To make it accessible to screen readers, it is hidden in the HTML code. In this manner, information contained in your image can still be understood by someone who cannot see it.
5. Choose large, readable fonts
Avoid narrow or fancy typefaces and stick to big, serif or sans-serif styles. Do you want to try it? Ask anyone older than 60 if they can read your website without glasses by handing them a copy.