The term “website accessibility: is gaining widespread recognition. Some websites are not yet compliant in the current times, but developers and designers are ensuring to provide everyone with the features to better access the website, even those people with disabilities. If you are finding it hard to simplify website accessibility for everyone, you can always have the back of web accessibility consultants.
Let’s learn about the seven most important tips to make your website accessible.
Content management system (CMS) to support accessibility
Multiple content management systems exist to help build your website. After choosing the suitable CMS, select the theme that is accessible. Collect the information about creating accessible content and layouts for the selected theme. Keep in mind to follow the same guidelines while choosing the modules and plugins. Ensure that the video players and editing tools you are using support the accessible content. For instance – videos should have closed captioning, and editing toolbars should have the ease of including headings and accessible tables. The administration options of CMS should also be accessible.
Color with care
Color blindness affects nearly 8% of the population. Red-green color deficiency is the most common form of color deficiency. If you make your content accessible to every kind of person so that they can distinguish your content, every user will be satisfied. Additionally, visual indicators like an asterisk or question mark can also level up the game. Don’t forget to use white space or borders for visual separation. You can take the help of many tools to evaluate color contrast to make your page visually appealing, even for individuals with color blindness and low vision.
Label form correctly
Labeling the fields correctly is required to make the content accessible. Once any user starts typing, the label fields will disappear. It often leaves the users having doubts about the formatting of the content. There might be some instances when you have experienced an error just because you added a date as m/d/yyyy, and the label describing the format vanished once you started typing. This easy habit enhances website accessibility and the overall user experience.
Tables for tabular data
Explaining the page layout using tables adds verbosity to the screen readers. When a screen reader comes across a table, the user gets the information that there is a table having an “X” number of rows and columns, which might prove to be a distraction from the content. The layout of the website should be created using cascading style sheets rather than using tables.
Use headers for rows and columns to form the data tables. If the table is complex, you can include several cells within the table having a unique relationship to each other and make a distinction using the “scope” attribute in HTML. You can use table captions to provide the users with additional information so that they can easily understand the table relationships.
Making it easy to access all content from the keyboard
Some users might have mobility disabilities like stress injuries that make them unable to operate the system from the mouse. They find it easy to use the keyboard instead of a mouth stick. So, make your content keyboard accessible so that every user can easily navigate through the content.
Divide the content of long pages with anchor links so that the users can find the relevant portions without negotiating through other content. Include the option of “Skip to main content” at the top of every page so that users don’t have to see the whole page to reach out to the main content. Configure the menus to make them easy to access with the keyboards.
Check resizing and enable “skip”
Accessible websites should be easily resizable. What does it mean? When you zoom in and make your browser 150-200%, it should still make your website fully visible and navigable. It is important to make your site responsive not only for laptops or computers but for smartphones as well.
Enabling skip especially holds true for navigating the site and the content that is repetitive on every page. So, never forget to include “Skip” to allow the user to skip the repetitive content and get right to the body.
Giving unique and descriptive names to the links
Your content can’t get published without links. Ensure to use the texts that go well along with the link. If you think of using “click here,” you might need to think again. Why is this so? It could not work well for a screen reader user.
Sighted people have the ability to scan the web page for linked text. On the other hand, visually impaired users use screen readers to scan for links. Consequently, screen readers don’t go through the links to see the rest of the page. That is why using descriptive text puts light on the context of the links to the screen readers.
Use the unique content of the link initially. For instance – if you want them to click on “about us,” write – “To learn more about our organization, read about us,” instead of simply saying, “Click here to know more about our organization.”
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