Importance of Web Accessibility & How to Boost Your Websites

Web accessibility is a quality of a website or app that makes it easier for people with disabilities to use. Just as wheelchair ramps and Braille signage help some people enter, navigate, and use physical spaces, accessibility best practices help people with disabilities interact with digital assets.

Why Web Accessibility is Important:

The web and the Internet as a whole are increasingly important resources in many aspects of our lives including: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, entertainment, and more. To provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities, it is important that the web is accessible to all.

For starters, the number of people with disabilities is on the rise. Around 1 million people worldwide are living with a disability, which is approximately 15% of the world's population.

As an advantage, having an accessible website aids with SEO strategy, building your business easier to find in relevant Google searches.

Hub Sol Technologies offers some key reasons you need to consider website accessibility for your business site such as:

1. Appeal to a Broader Audience
   
   
2. Improve User Experience
   
   
3. Maintain Legal Compliance
   
   
4. Social Importance
   
   
5. Revenue

Appeal to a Broader Audience:

In order to define your target audience and direct them to your website, you need to know who specifically is searching for your product or service and what types of searches they are using.

This may sound like basic keyword research for SEO, but understanding your target audience goes beyond this.  As we get to know the audience better, this will inform your overall SEO strategy from the way you create landing pages to the way content is presented on the site. The strongest SEO strategies are those rooted in understanding the target audience so they can use them to guide every action they take because SEO is about marketing to people, not to search engines.

1. Carry out accurate keyword research to find the hyper-relevant search terms that need to be optimized for.
   
   
2. Enhance and drive relevant traffic from potential customers and clients.
   
   
3. Generate relevant content for your target audience to consume. Which will boost their user experience?
   
   
4. Convert a higher fraction of your organic traffic into leads or sales.

Improve User Experience: If you want to improve the user experience on your website, you are not alone. An easy-to-use site can mean higher traffic and happier visitors. However, it can be difficult to decide how to design your site for the smoothest possible experience.

A high search engine ranking will keep you ahead of competitors on the Google search pages. Ranking better for your business can:

• Improve your online visibility
  
• Reach more customers
• Boost brand awareness and recognition
•  Attract more website traffic
• Establish yourself as a thought leader
• Improve brand trust, loyalty, and credibility
• Generate more leads and conversions
• Improve your ROI

As you endure to generate traffic, your search engine rankings will boost.

Social Importance: Making an accessible website is also the true thing to do for your customers and business. Without accessibility, you are ignoring the needs of a big group of people. Persons with disabilities should have the same access to your content as non-disabled persons. Just as buildings for brick-and-mortar businesses should have wheelchair-accessible entrances, your online presence should also be accessible.

Revenue: If consumers can't explore your website, they'll struggle to convert leads and sales. If search engine crawlers cannot deliver your content, they will be unable to sort and rank it accordingly.

By ignoring web accessibility, you are driving away a significant portion of your customers from your website – the 6 million Canadian adults and 61 million US adults who are disabled.

What's more, without web access, you're doing your SEO strategy a disservice. Since sites with poor accessibility are ranked lower than accessible sites, you'll be losing a lot of traffic on that front.

You will improve the leads, conversions, and sales, boost your ROI as a result.

Legal Requirements: In many places, web accessibility is protected by law. In the United States, Canada and the European Union, web access is a right and therefore brands need to ensure that their websites and online content are accessible. Failure to adhere to web accessibility standards can land brands in trouble.

How to Boost Your Website Accessibility:

Hub Sol Technologies are sharing the important ways that you can improve website accessibility on your business site. Consider occupied with a professionals web design and development team. They can help you make these changes. Such as:

Add Images with Alt Text: Images on a webpage provide a lot of value to the users. However, they may pose a barrier to users with limited or impaired vision. Therefore, assigning alt tags to images will provide a description of the images that will enable users to understand the image through the use of a screen reader. Alt tags also add to a higher SEO score on Google search.

Use a CMS that supports accessibility: When creating a website, select a content management system (CMS) that supports web accessibility. Make sure page layout, themes, widgets, plugins, and other aspects are compliant with web accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.0.

Structure Your Content: Organize your content to improve readability. An organized page makes it easy for people to explore your content.

Start by using headings and subheadings. Break up large chunks of content with white space. Use bullets and lists as well.

Structuring your content will improve page navigation and dwell time.

Use descriptive title for links: Using descriptive titles for links will make it easier for people who rely on screen readers to navigate your website to understand the perseverance of the link and where they will be redirected.

Use colors carefully: Colors can help your users easily differentiate between different sets of information. However, color blindness and other disabilities may make it difficult for users to find information, call-to-action buttons, or other aspects when developers fail to maintain proper color contrast. To check the contrast of colors on your site, add the Google Chrome extension I want to look color blind.

Design forms for web accessibility: When designing online forms, it is important to properly label text fields with descriptive titles so that people who rely on screen readers can complete the forms properly. Using the Label tag or ARIA attribute will increase the reach of your web form.

Ensure site navigation via a keyboard: A big part of web accessibility is ensuring barrier-free navigation for the millions of users with motor function and vision difficulties. As a result, verify that your website can be fully navigated using the Tab and arrow keys or alternative hardware such as a mouth stick or single-switch input.

Turn dynamic content into accessible content: When embedding videos or gifs in your website, it is important to provide closed captioning and text options for users with hearing or visual impairments. Additionally, use ARIA properties when content is added or updated on a webpage without refreshing the page, which will ensure that screen readers become aware of the new content.

Test and Validate: When you use these web accessibility tips, be sure to test and verify everything. Watch for any design flaws or bugs. These issues can affect the UX of anyone using your site.