ADA-compliant websites are designed for everybody. These types of sites are designed so that someone with a disability can use the website in a way that works for them. Changing your website design to an ADA-compliant one will make your business more accessible, which means more traffic, and more traffic could help to scale your business efforts.
Since 2016, when the Department of Justice recommended that U.C. Berkeley adopt the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to make their website accessible, those guidelines have been regarded as the standard.
WCAG Recommendations
Building a more inclusive site and adopting the WCAG can help brands find a common reference point for accessibility. To be ADA compliant a site must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Businesses can use an ADA compliance plugin to make sure they’re on the right track in addition to making the following WCAG recommended adjustments:
Keyboard Friendly
ADA-compliant websites allow for the keyboard to be used throughout. Not all of your website’s visitors can interact with a touchscreen or grip a mouse. An actionable tip is to ensure that all video interactions and pausing can be completed using keyboard functions.
Visitors need to have access to your entire website using a keyboard. You may miss a sale if users aren’t able to navigate the areas where transactions are executed, like product orders, on your site via their keyboard.
Structure
The structure of your webpages shouldn’t hinder visitors from clearly navigating their way around the entire site. Site navigation, menus, links, and other guided actions have to be presented clearly and distinctly to all visitors who use keyboards, dictation software, toggle tools, or other types of accessibility interfaces.
The WCAG suggests eliminating videos that audio-play or have a time limit. If users can pause content and absorb your content at their own pace, then it will increase the likelihood that your messages are delivered to everyone more effectively.
Text and Readability
Equally accessible websites remember to add alt-text and ensure their fonts are readable.
It’s thoughtful of you to make your site perceivable and content readable for all potential users and good for business.
Providing alt-text captions for all images in your code allow site readers to describe your images audibly. Adding descriptive anchor text for links provides users with context about what action will occur when they click the link. ADA compliant websites use descriptive text options like “Order Food Delivery Here” or “Click here for Information on Our Products.”
Code with Standard HTML Tags
Your website can make sure that every web page includes proper tags and attributes. Doing this could help ensure that your form fields (first name, email, phone number, etc.) are coded for compatibility screen-reading software. The code on your site must use standard HTML tags.
ADA-compliant businesses provide all of their documentation in a text-based format. Documents using lots of images can’t be understood by software that reads text aloud for visually impaired website users and will not pass ADA compliant standards. Graphics should always be accompanied by a description/caption that can be read aloud to the visually impaired. Providing alternatives for time-based media will make your site more ADA-compliant.
Design With Your Audience in Mind
Increasing background visibility will improve readability, and using distinct color contrast between foreground elements and page backgrounds can make your site more accessible.
When you’re including graphics, they should not flash more than three times per second. Any more flashing, and you could inadvertently induce a seizure in someone who is browsing the page. Your business worked hard developing its informative content and you want everyone to have access to it.
