A website should be designed in a way that is accessible to everyone and not just able-bodied people. When building a website, one must consider that millions of users worldwide have special needs, disabilities, and impairments that make it difficult to use certain types of websites. Here are some common categories of disabilities:
Visual Impairment: Partial or total inability to see, perceive color.
Hearing Impairment: Reduced ability to hear.
Photosensitive Seizures: Experiencing seizures triggered by flashing colors and lights
Cognitive Disabilities: Disabilities that affect cognitive ability, such as dementia and dyslexia.
There are different ways to design a website, keeping in mind the disabilities mentioned above. Those who want to check website accessibility may quickly scan the said website in 3 easy steps with the ADA WebGuard compliance testing application. Continue reading this article to learn more about working around these issues and creating a user-friendly website that caters to a larger audience.
Keyboard-Friendly Website: If you want to make a website accessible to people with visual disabilities, you must ensure that one can browse the website without using a mouse. Statistics suggest that most assistive technologies rely on keyboard-only navigation. Therefore, you would notice that most of the websites that rank well on the Google algorithm are accessible via a keyboard. With the help of keyboard-only, one can easily navigate all pages, links, content, and so on.
Easily Accessible Content: Make sure the content you are putting on the website is easily accessible to anyone with disabilities. What may appeal (moving images and jumpy texts) to the senses of an able-bodied person might not be legible to a person with special needs. Therefore, the goal is to find the perfect balance that makes the website appeal to the general masses without being insensitive to those with different needs.
- Be sure to add text to all images so that people who cannot visualize bright colors or cannot see at all know what the picture represents. Furthermore, the writing acts as a substitute if the image fails to load. During uploading an image to WordPress, one can see this option of adding text to images. Alt text, also known as alt attributes or alt tags, can help improve a site’s SEO.
- Color blindness is a serious issue; therefore, one must be cautious about the color they use on their sites. Similar colors can be perceived differently (remember the famous dress color debate on the internet?); therefore, be sure to select contrasting colors to ensure clarity.
Resizable Text: People use various devices to browse through the same webpage, which means one can browse this very page from a tablet, a computer, and a smartphone. Different devices automatically adjust to the desired text font size to provide the readers with optimum comfort. But at times, people with special needs may require changing the font size manually to access the desired information provided on the webpage. During such instances, make sure the site can run smoothly without malfunctioning. Resizable texts on a website help visually impaired readers access a website without trouble.
