Website accessibility is not a trend. It is a must-have feature every successful platform should have. If you want your site to gain more traffic, increase conversions, and be loved by more people, ensure that there are no barriers for visitors to navigate through it and access all the content.
Today, the web development team at Wishdesk shares their web accessibility case study on making a site accessible for people with visual impairments. Check it out!
What is web accessibility?
Web accessibility (a11y) means that the website is developed and designed in a way to make it possible to all users, especially those with physical disabilities, to access the content and interact with all the elements on the website.
There is a special website accessibility standard called WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). This set of recommendations was created to satisfy the needs of people with impairments all around the globe. That’s why these shared guidelines should be met by the international community.
Key features of web accessibility
- screen readers friendly
- informative link texts
- alt text for images and videos
- transcripts or subtitles for audio and video content
- keyboard navigation
- contrasts
- and more!
Learn how to check if your website is accessible.
Accessible website for the visually impaired. Case Study
People with disabilities lose their time and effort when trying to access content which is not optimized for them. This happens because there is no ALT (alternative) text for images and videos or because the site is not designed for screen readers. We consider this a great issue, as all the platforms should be accessible in 2020.
BRIEF: We cooperated with the international organization who required to add accessibility to their platform in order to make all the content accessible to people with visual impairments and optimize the site for a screen reader user.
SOLUTION
- First, we conducted a website audit to see what elements need to be improved, both in code and design. Although the platform met Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it wasn’t optimized for the visually disabled users. For example, colors didn’t have enough contrast and many web elements couldn’t be accessed by screen readers.
- We designed a completely new layout which we find more efficient in terms of developing a site for the visually impaired.
- The navigation bar was redesigned to make it easier for people with disabilities to surf the website and move to next pages.
- We chose new color pallet to added more contrast to enable users differentiate between text and background.
- The new feature was added: now the users can see the site in black and white.
- The website now support zoom text software so users can increase or decrease font manually if needed.
- Our next step was to provide text equivalents for all non-text objects on the website and clearly define text boxes.
Overall, different types of visual adaptations for various levels of impairment were developed.
Make your website accessible today!
Developing an accessible website is not only about following guidelines, it’s more about relying on a well-designed framework that makes website features and content accessible to all users no matter of their condition. Contact web development team to add accessibility to your platform!
