The Right Thing to Do, and Good for Business, Too
Digital Accessibility refers to ensuring that everyone regardless of ability has access to, and can fully engage with, your content.
Accessibility – Not Just for Those With Disabilities
Consider:
- I’m not hard-of-hearing, but I love Fitbit alerts, non-audio alerts on my phone, and captions on NetFlix (think: Downton Abbey).
- I do not have visual impairment, but as I age I find it more and more difficult to do things like read in low-light situations.
- I do not have permanent physical disabilities, but I did break my arm a couple of years ago, rendering many daily and work-related tasks a particular challenge. How many people do you know that have experienced an arm, shoulder, knee, or hip injury?
The bottom line? Increasing accessibility increases the user experience (UX) for all!
An Opportunity to Address Unmet Needs
According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), most web home pages have content accessibility issues (more than 96% of 1 million websites). Meaning: Not only are most websites not ADA compliant, those organizations are losing potential customers or users.
Getting Started
Integrate accessibility into your business strategy to reach and engage with a wider, more diverse audience for brand success.
Here are 10 tips to get started:
- Use complete and descriptive meta data
- Use proper use of HTML elements such as headings, lists, and buttons.
- Include descriptive alt text for images.
- Provide descriptive link text (not “Click Here” or “Read More”).
- Caption and transcribe multimedia.
- Use larger font sizes and contrasting colors between text and background.
- Offer multiple contact and communication options.
- When developing audience personas, at least one should require accessibility accommodations.
- Use a compliance checker such as accessiBe to identify specific steps to improve website accessibility.
- Establish policies and procedures and conduct regular audits to ensure accessibility is ongoing.
Bonus: Many of these strategies not only help assistive technologies understand the structure of your content, but also help web crawlers do the same – Great for your SEO!
Now Is the Time
Let’s Recap – A more accessible website provides a better user experience for all visitors, broadens and diversifies your reach bringing in new audience segments, and improves SEO so customers and prospects can find you more easily.
The AMA says that eight out of 10 organizations are planning to make website accessibility a priority – Make sure you are one of them so you don’t get left behind!