You want all your website visitors to have the same positive experience.

Including people visiting your website with disabilities or limitations.

Because of this, some of your target audience might have difficulty accessing your content.

To fix this issue, make your website accessible to everyone, including:

  • The format
  • The structure
  • The navigation
  • The visuals
  • The written content

Basically, you need to pay important attention to web accessibility.

What is web accessibility

Web accessibility is making websites for all visitors, including visitors with:

  • Disabilities
  • Impairments
  • Limitations

This means using design principles to help website visitors with difficulties or limitations have a good user experience.

The same user experience as those without difficulties or limitations.

Accessibility is important for websites and gives everyone equal access to your content.

Who manages the internet’s web accessibility?

The group in charge of the web accessibility, enforcing guidelines on the internet, are:

They publish Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) plus related content.

Why care about web accessibility?

Web accessibility benefits all visitors by making your website and it’s content:

  • User-friendly
  • Easy-to-understand

Including your website visitors with disabilities and limitations like:

  • Blindness
  • Low vision
  • Learning disabilities
  • Cognitive disabilities
  • Deafness
  • Hearing loss
  • Speech disabilities
  • Physical disabilities

Whether these disabilities and limitations are permanent or temporary.

Improving your website’s web accessibility for all visitors including those with disabilities or limitations, helps to:

  • Enhance user experience (UX)
  • Show visitors, leads, and customers you value and care about them
  • Boosts brand loyalty and advocacy

Basically, you make your website easy for everyone and anyone who lands on it.

Web Accessibility Standards

There are four principles from the WCAG, when creating an accessible website.

These principles include:

Perceivable

Visitors must be able to read the content and information on your website.

Even visually impaired users, who need screen reader software that changes text into speech or braille characters.

Operable

Operable websites are used by visitors without any disruption.

Meaning visitors can use every part of your website’s functionality.

For example:

  • Navigating a page
  • Selecting a menu link
  • Playing and pausing video and audio

Note: The most operable websites are:

  • Simple
  • Straightforward
  • Without excess functionality

So, anything that could make using your website difficult for visitors with disabilities and limitations is taken out.

Understandable

All your website’s content should be easy to understand by visitors, like:

  • Written content
  • Graphic design content

Make language easy for your typical visitor to understand, including those:

  • With cognitive difficulties and impairments
  • Who don’t speak your predominant language

Your website’s structure should also be easy for all visitors to understand.

So, keep your pages organised and your navigation available to visitors on all pages.

Robust

Your website’s content should be easy for all visitors to:

  • Interpret
  • Consume

This includes visitors using assistive technology like screen readers.

To do this, make sure your HTML is written so assistive technologies can parse your code without visual references.

How to Make Your Website Accessible

If your website doesn’t meet the standards set above.

Or, the accessibility testing tool didn’t give your website the best score.

The WCAG has guidelines for each principle to improve your website’s accessibility.

Perceivable Web Accessibility Guidelines

Text Alternatives

Non-text items must have text alternatives for non-sighted people to understand, like:

  • Image content
  • Video content
  • Audio content

To meet perceivable accessibility guidelines:

  • For non-decorative images, use image alt text
  • For decorative images, use the alt attribute but leave it blank

Doing so will tell the screen reader that an image is there but to ignore it.

Alternative ways to consume time-based media

Time-based media includes:

  • Audio content
  • Video content

To meet perceivable accessibility guidelines:

  • For audio content, make a full transcript of the recording
  • For video, use captions properly synced with the audio

Doing both of these will help visitors with limited hearing.

Structure content in an adaptable way

Write your HTML files so if the page’s styling is removed, the information and structure remains.

For example, to convey the information use:

  • Headings
  • Ordered and unordered list
  • Bold and italic text

This way, even stripping back the page’s styling would leave the information on the page.

Make your content easy to see and hear

Use colour contrast so everyone can read:

  • Your content
  • Understand any visual content

This includes visitors with colour blindness.

Plus, visitors should be able to adjust or stop any background audio.

Operable Web Accessibility Guidelines

Total functionality with the keyboard

Everyone can’t use a mouse, so visitors should access all your website’s functionality with the keyboard.

For example:

  • The tab button lets users go between elements of the page
  • The enter/return button selects the elements

Give time to engage with your website

Give time for visitors to use your website to:

  • Read content
  • Watch content
  • Use various content types

If a section of your website has a time limit, allow visitors to extend or cancel it. 

Accessible drop-down menus

Set a time delay for the menu to disappear, if visitors disengage with the menu from the mouse.

Because visitors could hover off the menu accidentally.

Avoid flashing content

Remember, content that blinks or flashes more than three times in a second can trigger seizures.

So, avoid this or provide a warning before.

Navigation that helps users know where they are and where to go

To show visitors where they are on your website and which parts of your website are clickable, use:

  • A clear page title
  • Meaningful links
  • A keyboard focus indicator
  • Proper headings

Understandable Web Accessibility Guidelines

Readable text content

Think about your overall potential audience when making your content.

Your content should be easy to understand by all your readers, including visitors learning your native language.

So, don’t use:

  • Highly technical jargon
  • Regional slang

Logically structure your pages and website

Put your navigational links and page in common places, when planning your website’s structure and navigation.

For example, on your page put the navigation:

  • Above the fold
  • In the header
  • In the footer

Have useful error messages

When your visitors receive an error message, give them:

  • A clear description of the error
  • Instructions fix the mistake

Robust Web Accessibility Guidelines

Write HTML that can be parsed

Assistive technologies use a web page’s HTML file to translate its contents to a different format.

So, make sure your HTML code for your web pages are well-written.

To do this:

  • When needed, use start and end tags
  • Don’t use duplicate IDs on elements
  • Don’t use duplicate attributes in the same HTML tag

Web Accessibility Tools

There are web accessibility testing tools you can use today.

W3C has a list on their website to:

  • Learn more about them
  • Compare them to each other

Here are a few options below about these accessibility tools:

WAVE

WAVE shows you how accessible your website is.

With visuals showing the areas of your website that aren’t accessible.

To start:

  • Enter your website’s URL
  • Wave shows which areas of your website don’t meet WCAG standards
  • Gives a human audit
  • Reviews your website’s content

DYNO Mapper

DYNO Mapper is a sitemap generator.

Meaning it uses sitemaps to see how accessible your website is.

It works by using:

  • Content inventories
  • Audits
  • Keyword tracking

The tool integrates with Google Analytics to analyse areas needing accessibility improvement.

Dyno Mapper test websites of all types, including:

  • Public
  • Private
  • Online apps

WCAG Compliance Auditor

WCAG Compliance Auditor uses WCAG standards and guidelines to review your website.

This tool looks at your website’s accessibility impacts and priorities.

Ideal for users who don’t improve their website’s accessibility often.

Because this tool gives:

  • Recommendations on improving your website’s accessibility
  • Benchmarks to measure your website’s accessibility over time

SortSite

SortSite helps show how accessible of your website is:

  • Overall
  • By web page

This tool does this by using 1,200 different guidelines and standards.

Examples of categories SortSite reviews for accessibility include:

  • Broken links
  • Compatibility
  • SEO
  • Privacy
  • Web standards
  • Usability

A11Y Colour Contrast Accessibility Validator

A11Y Colour Contrast Accessibility Validator helps make your website’s colours accessible.

It shows your website’s or its web page’s colour contrast issues.

You can either test your website by:

  • Your URL
  • A specific set of colours

When colour or contrast errors are found, this tool gives recommendations to fixing them based on WCAG standards.

Conclusion

It’s not legally required but makes your website accessible and WCAG-compliant.

This helps create a positive UX that boosts customer loyalty.

And by making your website accessible, you’re doing the right thing for your visitors.

Now it’s your turn.

Tell me how this post helped you make your website more accessible?

If you have other recommendations not listed above?

Or which accessibility tools do you use?

Let me know in the comment section below.