Why Choose Accessibility?
Often it can be hard to persuade people to make an accessible website. Why? Well, it can often be time-consuming, more expensive, and most don’t know where to start.
If you do make an accessibility-ready website, most will create one to avoid a lawsuit.
But I want to pivot that thinking. Accessible websites actually have a lot of benefits. For starters, it can give you significant is boosts in your website performance like better SEO
How Accessibility and SEO Work Together
1. A Better User Experience
Have you ever tried to navigate a website that is difficult to use, hard to read, or frustrating to navigate? It’s infuriating.
A significant aspect of web accessibility actually follows a really great methodology called K.I.S.S., also known as “Keep it Simple, Stupid.”
In other words, it means making your website easy to use so that the user doesn’t have to do any work. It should almost be like the screen is holding your hand and taking you to the right spot. For example:
- In the U.S., we read from left to right, so having your most popular items appear first in the navigation can provide a quicker user experience for everyone.
- Make sure your heading orders are correctly nested to provide a better reading experience.
- Don’t use sliders. Slider’s scream for our attention and prevent us from reading the main content.
I think a company that does a great job of this is apple. No one keeps it as simple as apple does. I give thanks to Steve for showing us the beauty in simplicity. Your website isn’t meant to be flashy, that’s why we have video games. It’s a place to connect your customers with the information, tools, or services they need. Don’t make it harder for them to use what you’re trying to sell.
Alt Text and Keywords For Images
Alternative text is used to provide an alternative to a visual item on a page. Such as images on a page like .jpg, .png, or .gif.
Please note that alt-text is different than an image caption. Captions are visible to all sighted users of a web page and sit below an image. The alt text is visible when the file doesn’t load, or it’s also what shows up on google images
Video Captions/Transcripts Getting Indexed
Video transcription are a text-based description of a video file. This is essential for someone who is blind and deaf. Transcripts allow deaf and blind users to get content through the use of refreshable Braille readers and other devices.
The SEO benefits here is that transcripts allow your content to be picked up by google spiders when they’re indexing your website.
Captions
Captions are text alternative of the spoken word presented in a video. Not only do they benefit people who are deaf. Studies have increasingly found that captions help everyone and provide a better user experience for the end-user. Happy users mean an increased likelihood of converting a user to a client.
Conclusion
Accessibility is a win for everyone. It provides a better user experience for all users and can help improve your marketing efforts.
I have a feeling in the future, Google will announce a significant update rewarding A.D.A compliant websites.
But till then, if you need any help with your web accessibility. Please contact us, and we would be happy to lend a hand.