How to make your website accessible

What does ‘accessibility’ mean when talking about websites?

Accessibility is the practice of ensuring your website is usable for everybody, no matter what their limitations or disabilities may be. As a design agency, we approach website design from more than just one angle. A website needs to be visually appealing in order to engage with users and encourage exploration of a website. This ultimately leads to users purchasing your product or service. Colours, fonts and images should all work in perfect harmony to achieve this, but this needs to be built on a foundation of accessibility and an intuitive user journey. Your users may have a wide range of impairments, so you need to think about how to make your website usable for them with clear content and navigation. If you owned a shop you would need to think about ramps for wheelchair users for example. In website design there are digital tools and considerations to help those same users.

Why is it important to have an accessible website?

There are no formal laws requiring you to have an accessible website, but from a business point of view, it really pays to have a website that can be used by everybody. People with disabilities make up 15% of the worlds population, that’s over a billion people. The more people that can use your website, the more potential customers you can reach. It really is that simple. By having an accessible website, you are not only reaching customers that other websites can’t, you are also enhancing your brand in terms of appearing to ‘do the right thing’ and showing the world that you are an inclusive company.

What are the most common impairments?

The first thing to consider are what these issues may be. The most common are:

• Visual

• Hearing

• Neurological

• Physical

• Mental

Some of those users might well have tools and aids to help them, but there are things you can do too.

What steps can you take?

1: Enable alt tags

Alt tags are not purely used to improve search ratings, they also work to help visually impaired users with a screen reader. If your webpage has images that are purely there for visual purposes rather than essential information, then add an empty alt text field (alt=""). This means that screen readers are able to ignore them.

2: Disable auto play

This is something we would recommend on all websites anyway. Users can find it pretty annoying when video or audio automatically kicks in. Give users the power to watch videos or listen to audio by providing controls, rather than forcing it on them. Autoplay can also make your site inaccessible for users using screen reading software. Users with cognitive impairments can also find it distressing and hard to concentrate when faced with unwelcome video, animation or audio. If you do include video content, think about proving the option to turn on subtitles.

3: Ensure text is readable

Give users an option to increase font sizes to allow the visually impaired to read and navigate your website with ease. From a design point of view, you need to also consider the contrast of your text. We have software to test for this and there are websites such as https://contrastchecker.online/ but there are also quick tricks you can try. For example, viewing content in greyscale will give you a good idea of how clear the text might be. There are also problem colours such as yellow which can be very hard to read. Take into consideration that users will be viewing your website on a wide range of screens. Not only in terms of sizes, ranging from large desktop monitors through to smartphones, but the quality and resolution can also vary greatly.

4: Make sure the navigation is clear and understandable

Keep your navigation consistent in terms of style and location. Ensure clear page titles and proper headings so that users know where they are on your website. Headings provide a structure of hierarchy. This needs to be considered not only visually, but should also be mirrored in the structure of the code within the site. Think of it as a table of contents.

5. Ensure total functionality via the keyboard

Not everyone has the hand dexterity to be able to use a mouse. Therefore, all functionality on your website should be accessible using the keyboard. The tab, arrow and enter keys can be used to navigate for example. Navigational functions such as a double tap can also be problematic.

Summary

Although abiding by these standards are usually not a legal requirement, there are strong ethical and commercial reasons for meeting them. Certain organisations such as governments, housing associations or educational establishments are required to meet certain accessibility standards, but for every website it makes sense to be accessible to as wide a range of customers as possible. The fixes and considerations listed above are easy to implement and will only have a positive impact for your business.

For a complete and more in depth look at accessibility guidelines, go to https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/