5 Tips for Improving Website Accessibility

Website Accessibility. Image Source: AbilityNet

It can be quite disappointing to come across a missing page while reading a book, right? Even if you continue reading, you’d still miss some essential information or chances are, you’ll get confused. Just like that, trying to navigate a website as a person who is vision or hearing impaired can be quite confusing too. That is why it is really important that you move your website toward better accessibility. So, today, we will be giving you 5 tips for better website accessibility. The list is far from comprehensive, but you can think of it as a practical starting point.

But before we start our article, let’s learn a little about website accessibility first. Simply saying, website accessibility is something that makes your website easier to use by people with disabilities, such as vision or hearing impaired. A website should be built in a way where all the users have equal access to information and functionality. And website accessibility just does that for you. With that being said, let’s look at these 5 tips for better website accessibility.


5 Tips for Better Website Accessibility


Add Alt Text to Images

Alternative texts are presented to blind screen reader users in place of images they cannot see. Every image that conveys content or has a function on your website should be given an alternative text. But, make sure you add meaningful alt text to the images you upload. For example, “image1208” – not meaningful; “a beautiful house with garden” – meaningful.

Complete Your Window Titles

Navigating to many pages of a website can be a nightmare to those who are visually impaired if clear page and window titles are not designated. Window titles appear within your browser’s tab. They don’t only describe the contents of the page but also help the user quickly determine what page they are on within a website. If your web pages have vague titles, it can be nearly impossible for visitors who are vision or hearing impaired to easily navigate and locate the needed information on a website. Therefore, make sure you add or update the window titles for better website accessibility.

Craft Helpful and Descriptive Link Anchor Text

It is really important to create descriptive link anchor text as it helps to understand where links within a webpage are actually pointing. Simply, create the link description in the text editor and make sure it is descriptive. For example, ‘Submit a request to repair.’ Now, highlight the descriptive anchor text and add a hyperlink for the URL of the linking page.

Transcribe Video Content

If you plan on embedding videos within your content, you need to make sure to include a transcription. It will help the hearing impaired to understand the information in the video.

If you choose to embed a video from YouTube, then you can use their transcription tool to generate a text version of your content. And if you choose to add a video directly to your website, then just transcribe the video and include the transcription below the video itself.

Utilize Heading Tags

Content hierarchy helps both users, and assistive technologies, understand the structure of a webpage. Utilize headings in a way that breaks up your content according to topics and subtopics. Utilize the heading tags such as h1, h2 properly, so that the visually impaired can easily skim a page for a certain topic.

We’ve finally come to the end of our list of 5 tips for better website accessibility. There sure are an abundance of things you can do to make your website more accessible. Above were just a few things you can do to start your journey with website accessibility.

We hope this article helped you learn a little more about accessibility. If you have anything to add, share or ask, please feel free to use the comments section below.

 

Reference:

Global Reach
WEBAIM

Featured Image: AbilityNet

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