Creating an accessible website for your business is essential if you want to ensure that individuals of all abilities are able to use it, yet many entrepreneurs are unaware of the various considerations that need to be made. Not only does taking accessibility into account help your customers throughout the process of navigating your site, but it can also help boost your site’s visibility on search engines and keep you protected from legal liability. Need a hand working out a plan for your site? Take a look around at Moon Design to find out more about the services you can choose from, which not only include professional design for your website but for your marketing materials as well.
Here are a few things you’ll need to consider when it’s time to bring accessibility to your website:
Keep readability in mind, even with banners
It’s easy to get caught up in making sure the content of your site is accessible and forget that even SEO tools need to be included. If your site has a banner, it needs to be easily readable for those with visual impairments. The good news is you can design banners online that are easily legible by utilizing text over an image. This makes the text easy for screen readers–a type of assistive device–to pick up, and you can really showcase the message you’re trying to convey through the banner.
Use headings throughout the site
An accessible banner is essential, but what about the content below it? Whether you’re creating a blog for your business or just need to break down the information on your homepage, headings are important for your site because they help screen readers easily interpret the text. The type of heading you use and the style in which it’s presented are both important factors for individuals who need accessibility because it helps them understand the structure of the content and ensures that they don’t miss anything. Keep in mind that using a bold typeface for a heading instead of a larger font size might confuse a screen reader.
Use color carefully
Headings are a great way to help divide up your website content into manageable sections, but it’s also important to consider the use of color, especially when it comes to fonts. Many sites use the colors red and green to indicate required form fields, but these hues are difficult or impossible to see for those individuals who are living with a color deficiency, so it’s important to use color with care. If you’re unsure whether your site is color compliant, there are online tools that will help you check the contrast on every page.
Make sure images and videos are optimized
The right colors on your site can help users of all abilities correctly read forms and access important information, while alt text, closed-captioning, and transcripts are tools that should be used to describe images and videos so that individuals of all abilities can make use of them. Not only that, these tools can help boost your SEO at the same time. It’s also a good idea to make sure video players don’t begin playing automatically and that they can be accessed with a keyboard, not just a mouse. Slideshows should also be accessible through a keyboard, and each photo should have its own alt text.
Creating an accessible website is an easy way to ensure that your customers or followers can find and interact with you, and by using tools that allow you to design a free banner, you can merge SEO tactics with accessibility so that your site is at the top of every search engine.
