Accessibility in website design means that your website is accessible for the biggest circle of people, including people with disabilities. These can be people who have trouble with seeing, hearing, moving, or processing information. The idea is to get your website more accessible for these people too, so they can use it and not be excluded.
Depending on the disability, there are different solutions that you can implement on your website. Starting with simple color contrast between the background and the text, up to optimizing your headings structure, you can change a few things to make your website more accessible. Many people with a disability use screen readers and keyboards to access your website, so there are technical ways to make your content more understandable and readable.
Is Accessibility Good For SEO?
Accessibility is very good for SEO, because it’s accessible for more people and also because its one of the rules of the Google search algorithm.
In Canada every 4th person has some form of disability, which means that there are 8 million people who have disability. These people are potential customers of businesses, and having an accessible website means that you serve a 20% more people than not having it. The number is similar in the US, where one in five people has some form of disability.
Digital accessibility is standardized through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). According to WCAG there are four key principles that every website should have, often referred to as P.O.U.R., meaning:
Perceivable: Everyone should be able to see and hear the content on your website. This means things like adding text descriptions for images (so people with visual impairments can understand them) and captions for videos.
Operable: Users should be able to easily navigate and use the website. For example, people should be able to move through the site using a keyboard, not just a mouse, and buttons should be easy to click.
Understandable: The content should be easy to read and the website should be simple to use. This includes using clear language and having a consistent layout, so people know what to expect when they click around.
Robust: Your website should work well with different devices and assistive technologies, like screen readers, even as technology changes over time.
In many countries, website accessibility is required by law as the Accessibility Canada Act in Canada, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S. and the European Accessibility Act (EAA).
What Can I Do To Make My Website More Accessible?
Optimizing your website to be more accessible is not hard. Most of the SEO good practices are already accessibility-friendly, so you just need to implement the following principles:
Alt Text for Images: Make sure you have written the Alt text on all your images. The Alt text should describe the image, so someone who is using a screen reader can understand what is on it. This also helps search engines understand what an image is about, making it essential for both accessibility and SEO.
Text Descriptions for Links: When using the Anchor text for the link, try to describe it in few words, and don’t just link to “here”. Like we did above, if you link statistics, put the anchor text on few words like “every 4th person in Canada”. Descriptive link text helps users to understand the destination of a link, especially if they use screen readers. For SEO, proper anchor text improves internal linking and helps search engines associate relevant content.
Heading Structure: Have a clear and logical heading structure (using H1, H2, H3 tags) so people with screen readers can easily navigate your content. This also helps search engines crawl and index your content more effectively.
Mobile Responsiveness: Having an accessible website means having a mobile-friendly website. Making sure that your website can be resized and used on different devices helps a lot with accessibility. Mobile-friendliness is also a key factor for SEO, as Google prioritizes mobile-optimized websites.
Fast Page Load Times: Accessibility standards require fast-loading pages, especially for users with slower connections. Fast loading times are also a ranking factor in SEO. Aim for loading times of less than 1 second.
Transcripts for Videos: Adding transcripts for video content makes it accessible for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. Transcripts also add indexable text to your website, which can improve SEO rankings.
Color Contrast: Color contrast is important for making your text easy to read, especially for users with vision problems. Aim for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for regular text and 3:1 for larger text. Good contrast helps everyone have a better experience on your website.
How Do We Do It At Oshara?
On Oshara’s website (where you are now) we have set up a plug in that transforms the website and makes it accessible for people with disabilities.
On each page of our website, you can see the Universal Access Icon, which activates the plug in and transform the website depending on the person that is using it. To access it, look in the bottom-right corner, there is an icon of a human finger within a circle.
After you click on the Accessibility button, you get a scrolling menu in which you can choose how you want our website to be displayed.
Above, we have an ADHD-Friendly profile where you have your attention on just a specific part of the website. So you don’t get overwhelmed with too much information, and you read our content bit by bit.
The above image is from a dark contrasted profile that makes our website easier to read for the visually impaired people. It gives greater contrast to our elements so they are easier to read and you can see more details.
We are using the AccessiBe plugin for our website, so we can have all these options. It’s working great.
Conclusion
Accessibility is very important for making your website accessible to the widest audience. Good Accessibility and good SEO practices have a big overlap and they both make your website better functioning, and easier to rank on search engines. A website owner can boost visibility and search results by improving their web page for both SEO and accessibility, making the user experience better, increasing readability, and ensuring that web accessibility and SEO work together for a more effective site. Further optimizing your website for people with disabilities gives you access to a bigger customer base, and creates better, more inclusive business.
Optimizing your website for Accessibility is not hard. It can be done in different ways, whether manually or by installing different plugins. If you need help with optimizing your website to be more accessible we would be glad to help. Contact us today we run the best SEO agency in Montreal.
