6 Ways to Make Your Website Accessible for All
Screen Reader users can enjoy your site if you take steps to make your website accessible.
Most likely, you want your website to be able to reach as many people as possible. That is why taking steps to make your website accessible to people with disabilities who may otherwise be unable to interact with your content. Web accessibility applies to all disabilities that may affect web access, including auditory, cognitive, physical, neurological, visual, or speech-related. Making your website accessible is a lot easier than you may think. There are several steps you can take to increase your accessibility today.
Add Images with Alt Text
Visual elements like featured images are an accessibility barrier to blind web users or those with low vision. These web users often use Screen Readers that read the text on-screen. These technologies cannot read the text in an image, but they can read “alt text,” created to describe your images’ content.
Allow Font Enlargement
People with low vision cannot often read small text sizes and require specific font settings when browsing websites. Offering an alternate style sheet that can enlarge your font without breaking your page layout can greatly increase your website accessibility. You should also make your CTA buttons large.
Consider Contrast Sensitivity
Various visual impairments incorporate low color contrast sensitivity. This means that background and font color sizes too close in color become unreadable to some people. To avoid this, use high contrast between the background and font colors, and avoid using thin fonts.
Add Keyboard Navigation
For blind and visually impaired users, using a mouse for website navigation is not an option. These individuals can use Braille keyboards to navigate a website, so you should make your website navigable with keyboard shortcuts. Make sure any interactive elements are accessible, including:
- URLs
- Anchor text
- Drop-down menus
- Widgets
- Forms
- CTAs
- Dialog boxes
Make Multimedia Accessible
Making video on your website accessible does not just mean considering blind or visually-impaired users, but deaf and hard-of-hearing users as well. You can use audio descriptions to describe visual-only parts and provide text captions that synchronize with the video and audio.
Use Descriptive URLs
Screen readers can quickly and easily read descriptive URLs, which offer visually-impaired users necessary context. Accurate descriptions also make it easier for these users to navigate to the section of your website they want to go to. For example, when labeling your about page, “website.com/about-our-company” has higher readability than “website.com/about.”
By incorporating these techniques and more into your web design, you can make your website accessible to 100% of your potential audience.
Contact Adventure Web Interactive Today
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