Website accessibility involves designing and creating websites so that they can be used effectively by all people, including those with disabilities. This includes individuals who may have visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, or other impairments that affect their ability to interact with online content.
An accessible website ensures that:
- Visitors with visual impairments can use screen readers to interpret text and images.
- Visitors with hearing impairments have access to captions and transcripts for multimedia content.
- Visitors with motor disabilities can navigate a website using keyboard-only input or assistive devices.
- Visitors with cognitive disabilities can process content through clear and consistent design.
Accessibility can benefit your site in a number of ways:
- Inclusivity and Equal Access: By its very nature, an accessible website can attract more visitors, meaning a larger audience and more potential clients. Accessibility promotes inclusivity by ensuring that everyone, regardless of ability, has equal access to information, services, and opportunities on the web. For many people with disabilities, accessible websites are essential for daily activities like communication, shopping, education, and employment.
- Improved User Experience
Accessibility features, such as clear navigation, alt text for images, and high-contrast design, often improve the overall user experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities.These features also help search engines locate and understand your website. - SEO Benefits
Many accessibility practices, such as using descriptive alt text and semantic HTML, align with best practices for search engine optimization (SEO). This can improve a website’s search engine rankings and visibility. - Legal and Ethical Responsibility
Many countries have legal requirements for web accessibility. Non-compliance can lead to lawsuits and penalties, making accessibility a legal obligation for businesses and organizations. Examples of such legislation include:- The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S.
- Web Accessibility Directive in the EU
- Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 in the UK.
- Accessible Canada Act (ACA) in Canada.
In addition, stricter regulations are expected in the future such as the European Accessibility Act (EAA) which will take effect June 28, 2025.
Who determines accessibility?
The most commonly accepted standards for accessibility are set by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These provide specific recommendations for creating accessible web experiences.
What are some examples of accessibility?
There are many aspects of accessibility, but some examples are:
- Grayscale: Allowing users to view the site in grayscale colors helps color blind visitors and others with visual impairments.
- Use of Alt text for media: Alt text can be read by screen readers, making media accessible for the visually impaired.
- Color contrast: Increasing color contrast is another way of making your site more readable for the color blind and visually impaired visitors.
- Fonts: Decorative fonts can be visually appealing but they can make your site difficult for the visually impaired to read. Simple sans serif fonts are preferable for these visitors.
- Underlined links: Visually impaired visitors may have difficulty finding links if they are only identified by color. Underlining links makes them easy to pick out.
What is the Ally-Website Accessibility plugin?
The Website Accessibility plugin helps you make your site more accessible by adding an accessibility widget to your site along with an accessibility statement. This widget displays an icon on your screen. When visitors click this icon, they are presented with a number of tools that will help optimize your site for their needs. These options include:
- Bigger text: Increases the size of your site’s text. Can help visually impaired visitors.
- Bigger line height: Increases the amount of space between the lines of text on your site. Can help visually impaired visitors.
- Text align: Allow visitors to align your site’s text to the right, left or center of the page. This can help visitors with cognitive issues or those with dyslexia.
- Readable font: Changes the font of your website to one that is more readable. This helps dyslexic visitors.
- Grayscale: Turns the colors in your site to shades of black and white. This makes the site more readable for color blind visitors.
- Contrast: Uses a slider to adjust between different contrast modes: Negative, High, Light, and Dark Contrast. Helps color blind and visually impaired visitors.
- Page Structure: Displays header and links in a structured list. This helps screen readers navigate the page.
- Reading mask: Makes the cursor bigger or turns it into a reading guide that focuses on selected elements. This helps vision impaired visitors or those with reading disabilities.
- Hide images: Hides the images on a page to reduce distractions and make the page more readable. Helps visitors with attention deficit disorders.
- Pause animations: Prevents animations from running on a page and helps users focus on content. This makes reading the page easier for visitors suffering from an attention deficit disorder or those with cognitive issues.
- Highlight links: Underlines all links on the page to make them more visible. Helps visually impaired visitors and those with cognitive disabilities.
- Site map: Quick link to structured list or diagram of a website’s pages which, helps visitors navigate the site.
- Skip to main content: Allow site readers and similar tools to jump directly to the most important part of the page.
Using the Ally-Website Accessibility widget is only one step, although an important one, toward making your site available to everyone. There are a number of steps you need to take, such as making sure all your images have alt text, to make your site fully accessible and up to legal standards.
