For your website to be good enough for your audience, you need to focus on content management systems, the quality of your content, platform design and responsiveness to name a few aspects.
While most designers focus on these aspects, they forget one vital one which is the accessibility of their website. Most ignore this giving the misconception that accessibility-centric websites tend to be uninviting as a reason.
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Given that there are 217 million people with moderate visual impairment, according to the WHO website, designing with accessibility in mind can improve web traffic, sales rates, and add a layer of inclusiveness.
To succeed in this venture, you need to include accessibility into the core fabric of your design. This will ensure that anyone, regardless of their disability, can interact smoothly with your website.
Here are a few insightful tips for excelling in designing an accessibility-centric website:
#1. Use Contrasting Colors
In case you have a large target audience with visual impairment, the fact that your website barely has contrasting colors will spawn high bounce rates. This is because the users will find it tough to interact with your website, call to actions and backlinks since some might not differentiate between different colors and shades. Sharp color contrasts will be vital in assisting anyone with color deficiencies.
Besides, color plays a pivotal role in differentiating your brand from the noisy competition scene. To better understand the perspective through which users see your website, insert some of your URLs in any of the online colorblind web page filter tools. At the very least, ensure that the color contrast ratio is at 4.5:1.
#2. Comprehensively Describe Your Context Links
As members of your audience who use screen readers to navigate through your website visit any page, they have the option to skip from one link to the next. When they select a link, it will typically be read out loud by the browser of their screen reader. As a result, a link that only says ‘click here’ will provide little to no information to this type of audience.
To improve the accessibility of your website, use better and deeper context link descriptions, according to Neil Patel. Instead of using terms like ‘click here’ or ‘see more,’ use ‘click here to see related content.’ The plus side of using descriptive context links is that your search engine rank will also improve.
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#3. Make Use of Alternative Content Options
Using video and audio media to display content can be a great way to improve your search engine rankings as well as offer users a unique experience. However, such content will not be appealing enough for your hearing-impaired audience. Most will only leave your website which will be counterproductive to your efforts to improve your rankings.
Why not offer alternative content options? For instance, transcribe your videos and audio content to cater to such an audience. This will also be beneficial to users who would rather read than listen to the audio or watch the videos.
#4. Get People to Test the Site
Your website might look good and feel accessible enough, but is it really good enough? Unless you get real people to confirm the accessibility of your website, you will never know whether your efforts were successful enough. Sure, you might use tools like the online colorblind web page filters, but nothing outshines the opinion of your target audience.
Having people test your website will give you a chance to explore, investigate and understand how well users can interact with your website. You will easily identify the strong points and limitations of your design. Look for people with various impairments to assess the usability of your website.
Conclusion
An accessibility-centric website or blog is great for building your brand as your target audience will feel great that you walked the extra mile to cater to their unique impairments.
What’s even better is that the above tips are easily applicable to your website. Implementing these tips will help your visitors interact better with your website.
(Image Source: pixabay.com)
