Mastering Website Accessibility: A Complete Guide

on 14 March 2024, by Bogdan, in Blog, WordPress, Cloud, Guides

by Bogdan

As website owners, if you’re looking to make your website accessible by all, then mastering website accessibility is the way to go.

Website accessibility enables you to serve your site content and provide the same (or similar) user experience to all site visitors, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. Shockingly, over 96% of the top 1 million websites have home pages that are not accessible to people with disabilities, according to WebAim's report.

If you want to fix this, our guide will provide you with web accessibility best practices and guidelines that you can start implementing today. We will cover the following:

What is website accessibility
Four reasons you should make your website accessible
How to make your website accessible

Straightaway, let's begin by defining web accessibility in the simplest way possible.

What is website accessibility?

Website accessibility refers to designing and building websites or web applications so people with disabilities can fully access and use your website.

It involves eliminating any barriers or frustrations that may hinder their access to your website content. The goal is to ensure that site users with difficulties or limitations can have the same (or a similar) experience as those who do not.

Overall, web accessibility targets the following disabilities or limitations:

Low vision or blindness
Deafness or hearing loss
Cognitive disabilities
Physical disabilities
Speech disabilities

What does website accessibility entail?

Web accessibility entails the following techniques and more:

Utilize website builders: that are optimized for accessible websites.

Brizy is the go-to website builder for site owners who want to create fully accessible websites and engage their audience with disabilities. This robust builder follows proper web accessibility guidelines and semantic HTML markup to create a site content structure that is clear to assistive technologies like screen readers.

Providing alternative texts: for non-text content like images, so screen readers can convey the information to visually impaired users.
Keyboard accessibility: this involves making your site fully navigable via keyboard.
Provide video captions and transcripts: for multimedia content to make it accessible for users who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Design accessible forms: so that they're usable by everyone.
Develop a clear site navigation plan: to guide your users effectively throughout your website.
Integrate website accessibility tools: to test your site for accessibility, check for compliance with accessibility guidelines, and more.

These are just some of the essential components and best website accessibility practices. We'll get into those later. But first, let's have a look at some reasons you should make website accessibility a priority.

Four reasons to make your website accessible

The following are a few key reasons every business should consider making their websites accessible, particularly for people with disabilities.

Website accessibility provides equal access to information and resources online

According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), there are around 1.3 billion people worldwide with disabilities.

To be precise, 1 in every 6 people can’t easily access a website to find information, goods, and services they’re looking for on the internet because of their disabilities. And this number keeps increasing.

However, website accessibility best practices and guidelines ensure that all visitors can use your website, its features, and the given functionalities. After all, in this day and age, everyone should have equal access to information and resources online.

Additionally, accessibility is not only about providing information to visitors. There's also a business aspect to it.

It increases your business's bottom line

By making your website accessible, you have access to a wide range of people visiting you. This can have a positive impact on your customer base and revenue. For instance, in the case of ecommerce websites, 71% of shoppers with disabilities are less likely to abandon your website if they find it easy to use and navigate. In fact, many of these customers are willing to pay more if your website is designed to be accessible.

Improved user experience on your website

By prioritizing accessibility on your website, you can improve the user experience for all visitors, including those with disabilities or limitations. For instance, offering customizable font sizes, keyboard navigation, easy readability, responsive design, and the option to pause "distracting" animations can significantly enhance user experience.

Allowing users to control how they interact with your website can also increase the time they spend on it, which can lead to more opportunities for conversions.

It helps you avoid legal implications

There are legal implications of not following website accessibility best practices. For instance, failure to abide by ADA regulations for website accessibility can result in heavy fines, legal actions, and potential damage to the reputation of the organization. Businesses and website owners must prioritize accessibility to avoid these risks and ensure equal access for all users.

NOTE: Other regulations include Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the United States, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) globally, and the European Union's Web Accessibility Directive. All these regional regulations aim to ensure digital accessibility for individuals with disabilities.

Ready to get started? Here are some of the best practices to follow for a truly accessible website.

How to make your website accessible

Now that we know the benefits, let’s take a closer look at the best practices and techniques that can help you make your website accessible.

Choose website builders with built-in accessible features

Create accessible websites with Brizy

Brizy is a cloud-based or WordPress website builder and content management system (CMS). With Brizy, you can design, build, and launch responsive websites with no programming or design experience.

One of its most notable features is the vast range of template options that allow you to have a perfect starting point that you can customize to your liking. If you feel like dragging and dropping elements into place, that’s sorted out for you.

In addition, Brizy provides hosting, free SSL certificates, and various integrations with other tools and services to enhance your website's functionality.

The following are website accessibility features Brizy offers to help you design a full-fledged accessible website:

Built-in accessibility features: such as proper semantic HTML markup, proper headings, alt texts, tab index, attributes, ARIA labels, etc.
Customization: All the template and design layouts in Brizy are fully customizable to let you meet specific accessibility needs.
Responsive design: this plugin creates websites that adapt seamlessly across various devices and screen sizes.

Analytics and tracking: Integrates with analytics platforms like PageSpeed Insights to track website performance, user experience, and accessibility metrics.
Integration with website accessibility software: If you’re on Brizy Cloud, you can embed widgets like UserWay for an accessibility widget & audit reports for compliance.

Content management: for managing website content, including text, images, videos, and documents.
WCAG 2.0 compliance: including for Section 508 Standards, which makes the websites you build automatically ADA compliant.

After you’ve built a website with Brizy, you can still follow these best practices and tips to ensure your website is completely accessible and compliant with ADA regulations.

Ensure all your images have alt text descriptions

According to Baymard Institute, 55% of websites don’t use alt texts, yet it is one of the easiest accessibility steps to implement. Brizy allows you to easily add one as follows:

Using alt texts enables you to clearly communicate the core content or the information in your images. These descriptions are used by screen readers to help visually impaired users understand what the image is.

Alt text also displays text if the image doesn’t load properly, so your site visitors can easily know the kind of image that's supposed to be there. Additionally, adding alt texts helps search engines understand the content of your images and improves your SEO.

Here are a few tips for writing good alt text:

Better alt text: alt=" ash wood dining chair with upholstered seat"

Best alt text: alt=" ash wood dining chair with arms and upholstered seat"

Better alt text: alt=" ash wood dining chair with upholstered seat"

Best alt text: alt=" ash wood dining chair with arms and upholstered seat"

Make text content easily readable

Up to this point, your online shop is now ready to take on sales. If you're looking to expand your business, it's essential to also invest in a solid marketing strategy focused on customer acquisition and retention.

Provide transcripts and captions for audio and video content

Doing this will make your audio and videos accessible to people with limited hearing impairments. If you can allow translation, then people who don’t speak the same language as yours can benefit from this as well.

Captions, on the other hand, make it easier for users to follow along with your content. So, ensure both transcripts or captions are in sync with the audio or video.

Tip: The following are popular transcription services you can use to add transcripts or subtitles to your media content – Rev.com, Veed, or GoTranscript.

Keyboard accessibility

As a website owner, it’s important to ensure your site is fully navigable via the keyboard. Keyboard accessibility allows users to interact with your site without a mouse, benefiting those with mobility impairments or who prefer keyboard navigation. Here are a few things you can apply to achieve this.

Tab navigation: Using the Tab key to let users navigate through interactive elements on the webpage
Focus indicators: to provide clear visual cues, such as focus outlines or highlighting, to indicate which element currently has keyboard focus. This helps users understand where they are on the page and which element they are interacting with.
Offer keyboard shortcuts: for common actions or navigation paths within the website.
Ensuring all forms are accessible without a mouse, etc.

Following these best practices for keyboard accessibility and much more will ensure that all users can navigate your site easily. Additionally, consider using lawrina templates when incorporating legal documents to streamline accessible and compliant document offerings for your audience.

Develop a clear site navigation plan

A well-organized website will make it easier for people to find their way around your site and locate the information they need. If the site is poorly designed, most site visitors will feel confused or lost.

Tips for developing a clear site navigation plan:

Limit the number of navigation items to essential pages and categories to avoid overwhelming users. Prioritize clarity and simplicity in navigation design.
Organize navigation items hierarchically, with main categories and subcategories, to create a logical structure. This helps users understand the relationships between different sections of the website.
Use navigation labels to accurately describe the content or destination of each link. Don’t use an excessive amount of links.
Provide search functionality for users who prefer searching for specific content. These search features should be prominently placed and easily accessible.
Provide calls to action so visitors know what you want them to do next.

Test your website for accessibility

If you find the above website accessibility best practices quite overwhelming, here are a few online resources to help. Then, implement their suggestions to improve your site’s accessibility.

Some popular website accessibility testing tools include:

WAVE: this evaluation tool identifies accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors to help you make your content accessible to persons with disabilities.
axe DevTools: is a free Chrome extension tool for automated accessibility testing.
Google’s Lighthouse: Offers an accessibility audit feature within the Chrome DevTools for assessing web accessibility.
Accessibility Insights: Provides a suite of tools for manual and automated accessibility testing, including browser extensions and desktop apps.

Other best practices and tips for website accessibility

Ensure all interactive elements like navigation menu, dropdown menus, forms, sliders, toggle switches, etc., are easy to identify.
Choose colors carefully to convey your brand information. This is because there are over 300 million people globally are colorblind.
Write clear, simple, and useful error messages. Be specific and always keep them short.

Design forms that can used by everyone. Label the form fields clearly, use contrasting colors and larger font sizes for labels and instructions, and much more. Check out Brizy's webdesign features here and start creating right now

Conclusion

That’s it. In this guide, we've provided you with various ways and best practices to make your website accessible. By making your website accessible, you offer an equal user experience and serve your site content to all users, regardless of their abilities or limitations.

Brizy website builder can be a helpful tool in achieving this goal. It includes web accessibility features you can build on, with the help of this guide, to create an accessible website with ease.

Article by Bogdan

Co-founder & Head of Design, Bogdan has a passion for everything that works great and looks awesome. Guilty for most of the UI and UX around this place, you can say "Hi" to him at bogdan at brizy dot io