How website owners should step up their accessibility game
Written By: BOSS Editorial
Reading Time: 4 minutes
4.9 billion people have access to the internet. Amongst that large number, 15% of global web users also experience some form of disability. Whether it be visual, cognitive or auditory, tech users with any type of impairment are likely to face challenges when entering into an online world.
If you’re a business that prides itself on putting the customer first, accessibility should be a priority when it comes to designing your site structure and choosing the best website hosting for small business success. Embracing accessible design opens up your website to a whole new demographic, increasing opportunities for engagement and encouraging positive user feedback.
Opening up your navigation system and enabling accessible add-ons such as ARIA and text-to-speech features could reduce user difficulty when interacting with your site. Read on as we reveal just how easy it is to create an accessible webpage, and look at a few of the brands doing it right.
Don’t forget ALT text
A picture is often worth a thousand words, but those who struggle with their vision have a hard time interacting with visual elements, no matter how enticing something is to look at.
Many web users with visual impairments rely on assistive support, such as a braille or screen reader, that actively describes what is on their computer screen. Screen readers work best when scanning text. This can be site content, URLs or even ALT text.
Websites that prioritise visual media must put in extra effort when prioritising accessibility. When uploading an image, don’t forget to add a descriptive overview of the content in the ALT text. Doing this means that a site can still look aesthetically appealing, while screen readers can pick up image descriptions and relay them to users who struggle with their vision.
Offer an alternate style sheet
No internet user is the same. While some may require glasses to assist their vision, others could require hearing aids to improve their hearing. In order to account for all site consumers, it’s important to make your web page adaptable for all users.
Think about offering a customisable style sheet to users when they click on your landing page. Giving people a chance to enlarge their own text, personalise their own colour contrast or tweak the volume of external elements is a great way to put the power back into your audience’s hands.
Prioritise contrast sensitivity
It is important not to forget about colour and contrast when designing your site with accessibility in mind.
Visual impairments such as glaucoma, cataract, retinitis pigmentosa and diabetic retinopathy all cause sensitivity to low colour contrasts. Colour contrast is essential if you want your CTAs to be seen, especially by those who are visually impaired.
The key here is to have a high colour contrast between your text colour and your background. This could be black text on a white background or even flipped to a lighter-coloured text on a black background.
Better still, allowing your users to customise site colours and contrast themselves is a great way to make a site available to all users at the click of a button.
Download ARIA
ARIA, also known as Accessible Rich Internet Applications, is a downloadable set of attributes that supplements HTML and bridges the gap between site content and assistive technologies.
According to experts at Mozilla, “ARIA supplements HTML so that interactions and widgets commonly used in applications can be passed to assistive technologies when there is not otherwise a mechanism. For example, ARIA enables accessible JavaScript widgets, form hints and error messages, live content updates, and more.”
If you’re serious about improving your accessibility games, ARIA can ensure that your site is up to date with accessibility best practices, and it is easily translatable for devices such as screen readers and brail technology.
3 accessible site designs to take inspiration from
Now we’ve covered how to make your site accessible, let’s have a closer look at some of the brands currently pioneering the way forward for online accessibility in 2023.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is a great example of a website built with accessibility in mind. As a web development brand, they have an exceptionally easy navigation system and make great use of ARIA tagging.
Mighty Networks
Better still, the homepage is full of clear contrast content, legible text sizes and well-annotated imagery.
Seer Interactive
Another example of a website that knows how to take accessibility into consideration is Seer Interactive.
With their own accessibility adjustments feature, users can quickly customise their browsing experience to accommodate their needs. From text enlargement to ADHD-friendly mode that reduces the number of page distractions, Seer has built a site fit for all users.
BBC
The BBC sets a great example for other public service sites across the web. This is especially demonstrated through their keyboard navigation system.
BBC
For example, double pressing the tab key can allow users to skip content, while triple pressing can guide a user straight to an accessibility help feature that is able to be customised to a number of user needs.
