Conventional vs. Accessible Website Design – AccessiBe Techniques
Conventional vs. Accessible Website Design – AccessiBe Techniques
For the new-age businesses, which do most of their transactions online, it fully makes sense to optimize their websites for accessibility. The need is not just to be compliant with the accessibility laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act but also to ensure that your web content reaches a broader category of potential customers, thereby bringing in more revenue.
AccessiBe – Why incorporate accessibility to your website?
AccessiBe reiterates that it is necessary to incorporate accessibility to your website because about 25% of the adults in the United States who have a permanent or temporary disability with special needs access the website and understand their content as others. However, the downside of accessibility is that about 90% of the websites lack accessibility features and millions of users struggle now in terms of using the internet for their good.
Primarily, web accessibility is all about building websites, software applications, and technology tools to be used by people with disabilities. The standard to be met for accessibility is as derived by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) under the WCAG guidelines. People with various types of disabilities need to rightly perceive, understand, interact, and navigate through the websites and contribute positively by interacting with the online community. Web accessibility compliance covers all types of disabilities which affect access to the web. This includes but is not limited to,
- Visual,
- Auditory,
- Neurological,
- Cognitive,
- Motor,
- Physical,
- Speech, etc.
How is ADD interpreted for web accessibility?
The relevant sections specifying ADA compliance in websites is the Title II and Titles III of the law. Title II refers to the local and state government facilities which function with government funding that should offer equal opportunities to people with disabilities and equal access rights to all their services, activities, and programs. Title III specified that all places of public accommodation like hotels, restaurants, movie halls, hospitals, parks, hospitals, etc., should take measures to avoid discrimination based on disabilities and should ensure complete access.
Even though ADA titles do not clearly state the website accessibility requirements anywhere, it is noted that many court rulings and government interpretations specify accessibility compliance needs for the websites. There has been a spike in ADA-related lawsuits against websites in recent years. A study shows that about 2256 website-accessibility-related lawsuits were filed in the federal courts last year.
Optimizing websites for accessibility
First, you need to test your website to see what it lacks in accessibility and try implementing the following features:
- Add alt text for all images.
- Ensure that you caption the images clearly.
- Allow users to adjust the font sizes for easy readability.
- Make sure of the standards in color contrast sensitivity to meet W3C standards.
- Avoid usage of thin or flashy fonts.
- Enable keyboard-only navigation.
- Optimize touch and other accessibility features optimized for mobile devices.
- Make sure that the videos and multimedia content are accessible.
- Use descriptive URLs by specifying the content of the page.
- Use the ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles.
- Avoid usage of placeholder text in the online forms.
- Minimize the use of HTML tables.
As AccessiBe concludes, the creation of an accessible website is not difficult, but it can bring more views and better returns to your business.
