What are the benefits of accessible web design?

As a website owner, your responsibility is to ensure that your platform is user-friendly and easy to use. Thus, you should accommodate your site to the needs of all users or a significant audience will be excluded from your site. The more people use your resource, the higher traffic, conversions, etc. they cause. 

Your users are all different and have different needs. People with impairments should not be ignored. The #1 thing you should care about in 2021 is website accessibility. Today, the WishDesk web development agency explores how your website can benefit from an accessible web design. Stay tuned! 

What are the principles of accessibility?

We already talked about a11y accessibility and how to make a website accessible. Let’s review some key points of website accessibility.

Web accessibility is the ability of a site to meet the needs of people with permanent, temporary, or situational impairments. Its content, design, and interface components should be easy to see, understand, and use in different ways, including via assistive software.

In order to achieve ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance for websites and apps, special detailed guidelines were created. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have been developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Why is web accessibility important for your site?

• Brand reputation is enhanced. Show your clients that you care about them! Provide equal access to everyone.
• An accessible site gets a wider reach. 
• Protect yourself from possible legal issues.

What is accessible web design?

Accessible web design means that a site is designed to meet the needs of people with various impairments, as well as those who use assistive software. During website development, it is important to ensure that most people have access to all your site components. Focus on the most common physical disabilities first. They include vision and hearing problems, cognitive disabilities, photosensitivity, and motor skill conditions.

Implementing design accessibility for the conditions mentioned above is not that hard. You should understand what difficulties your users might face and try to solve them, and can always contact our specialists for an accessibility audit and help develop an accessible design.

Accessible web design can also benefit older people or people with temporary disabilities, for example, a broken arm or recovery after an eye operation. Also, those who can’t listen to audio at the moment, for any reason, would appreciate a website designed with accessibility in mind.   

Steps to make your web design accessible

1. Choose CMS (Content Management System) that supports accessibility. We highly recommend using Drupal or WordPress. 
2. Provide alternative text to the images. This is a short description of what is depicted in the image. Learn how to make images accessible. 
3. Create intuitive navigation. Your users should not spend ages looking for the button to proceed. 
4. Add enough color contrast. An accessible web color palette is important if you want all users to see and understand the content on your website.
5. Support keyboard navigation. Remember that not all people use a mouse to search the net, or their touchpad might be broken. Learn more reasons why an accessible keyboard is important. 
6. Design for different devices and screens. Make sure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly. 
7. Provide feedback for errors. Users must understand why this or that error appeared. Avoid text as images. Otherwise, people with visual impairment or someone who has no opportunity to see or load the image will lose a significant part of the content.

Make Your Website Design Accessible

As you can see, web accessibility embraces numerous aspects, including content, design, and navigation. Make sure your online business implements the best accessibility practices!

Our web development services company can do an accessibility audit of your website, as well as give recommendations on how to make your web design more accessible.