Ensuring that your website is accessible to everyone is not just a best practice—it’s a necessity. Web accessibility refers to making websites usable for people of all abilities and disabilities. By prioritizing web accessibility, you can provide a seamless experience for all your visitors. Unfortunately, many websites still fall short of these standards, making it difficult or impossible for some users to access the information they need.
The Importance of Web Accessibility
“An estimated 1.3 billion people – or 16% of the global population worldwide – experience a significant disability today,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This means that if your website is not accessible, you could be excluding a significant portion of your potential audience. For people with disabilities, an inaccessible website can be just as limiting as physical barriers.
Aspects of Web Accessibility
Web accessibility involves various practices and guidelines to ensure all users have a similar experience on your site, regardless of their abilities.
- Perceivable: Users must be able to perceive the information being presented. This means providing text alternatives for non-text content, ensuring sufficient color contrast, and offering captions for multimedia content.
- Operable: Users must be able to operate the website’s interface. This includes making all functionality available from a keyboard and giving users enough time to read and use content.
- Understandable: The information and operation of the user interface must be understandable. This involves making text readable and comprehensive and ensuring web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.
- Robust: Content must be quality enough to be interpreted by many user agents, including assistive technologies. Using proper HTML that screen readers and other tools can reliably parse makes your website more accessible.
Common Barriers to Web Accessibility
Several common barriers can prevent people with disabilities from accessing web content.
- Poor color contrast: People with limited vision or color blindness may struggle to read text without enough contrast between the text and the background
- Lack of text alternatives (alt text): People who are blind rely on screen readers to understand images. When websites use alt text, they can interpret the content and purpose of images.
- No captions on videos: People with hearing difficulties can understand video content when they have captions.
- Inaccessible forms: Forms that do not have labels that screen readers can convey, clear instructions, and error indicators can be difficult for people with disabilities to fill out and submit.
- Mouse-only navigation: People who cannot use a mouse need to be able to navigate websites using a keyboard.
How to Improve Web Accessibility
To improve your website’s accessibility, follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Here are some steps you can take:
- Offer text alternatives: Ensure all non-text content has text alternatives.
- Provide captions for videos: Make sure all video content has synchronized captions
- Ensure keyboard navigation: Make your site fully navigable by keyboard.
- Improve color contrast: Use high-contrast color schemes to make text easily readable.
- Simplify forms: Ensure forms are easy to understand and fill out, with clear labels and instructions.
For more information, read the Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA.
Web accessibility is not just about compliance; it’s about inclusion. By making your website accessible, you demonstrate a commitment to serving all visitors equally and ensuring that everyone has access to your content. This helps you reach a wider audience and aligns with your firm’s values of fairness and equality. Prioritizing web accessibility is the right thing to do and can help you avoid potential legal issues, enhance your brand’s reputation, and build stronger connections with your audience.