By Upma Kumari  February 17, 2024

To make a website more accessible to all types of users is not only a legal requirement but also a good practice to follow. Ease of use is one of the most important factors that decide the success of a website. If your website lacks this feature, it may get criticism.

No matter how well you create your website, if the website is not user-friendly for all, the chances of its failure are high. This means making a website more accessible is as important as the idea behind it.

So, in this article, here are the easy tips to make your website more accessible and well adhere to the ADA, especially for the disabled. Understanding the accessibility principles and integrating them into your website will help your business website to be accessible to all users. This will increase your customer base too.

Let’s get started!

9 Easy Tips to Make a Website More Accessible

As per many website owners, content, look, web pages, etc. are enough to fetch customers to their business website. However, such factors are important to make the website stand out from the crowd, accessibility remains a crucial element. If you don’t adhere to accessibility guidelines, you may face lawsuits and fines too.

So, it is necessary to make a website more accessible to cater to all people’s needs, including the ones who can’t read the content, or see graphics. To do this, you can either take the help of ADA website compliance consultants or follow the below-given tips to achieve this.

Use Alt Text With Images

Alternative text or Alt text is a little detail added to the images in the form of text on a website. People can read this text by assistive technology, like screen readers to translate the purpose of the image or picture to visually impaired visitors. Such people usually face challenges in knowing about the images if alt text is not used. If the visitors will face difficulty in understanding the web page content, it will create a barrier in the route to be web-accessible.

Apart from this, the alt text assists the search engines in understanding the website and gives them good rankings. To make a website more accessible, here are some important points to note:

• Try to use short and simple text. You can use the content for the image under 125 characters.
• The image and alternative text descriptions should not be the same.
• Don’t use alt text for decorative images.

Try to Use Header Tags

Headings in content are used to give a good structure to a web page. Due to the varying sizes of headings, they make content more readable. You can use a visually clear heading, especially for cognitively disabled people. While searching for web page content, headings play an important part. Readers can easily jump to the section they want to read.

To make the content more readable and understandable, you can use h1 and h2 headings. But remember, h1 should be used only once. You should systematically use headings, like, h1, then h2, then h3.

Try to Make a Keyboard-friendly Website

A website is considered fully accessible if all the users can navigate it through different sources, like keyboards. People with motor disabilities are unable to access the website through a mouse. So, to make a website more accessible for all and to offer a good user experience, it should be keyboard-friendly.

Here are some points to consider to make a website keyboard-friendly:

• Make sure that all the interactive elements such as buttons, links, input fields, etc. are easy to operate with a keyboard.
• Try to avoid skipping elements or confusing jumps.
• You can break the long-form content with the help of anchor links. This will assist keyboard users in skipping and jumping to the required option. You can also give a ‘skip-to-main’ content at the top of the page.

Use CTAs

Another one of the easiest tips to make a website more accessible is to use clear and unique call-to-action (CTA). With this, specially-abled people can access all website pages easily. For instance, you can provide ‘know more about the service’ in place of ‘to know more’ to avoid confusing the readers.

To include CTAs in the website content, you should make all CTAs accessible via the keyboard. Try to use catchy colors and make the CTAs simple.

Keep Templates and Layouts in Line

Complex interfaces make it complicated for users to access the websites. That’s why it is important to maintain consistency on various screens to make it easy for all users to use the same functionality. To maintain consistency in layouts, you can use standard fonts and color themes on varying screen sizes.

To avoid confusion for specially-abled people, all the elements should be in the same position and order. You should maintain consistency throughout the website pages. This is especially helpful if a user opens a website on one device and closes on another one.

Choosing the Right Colors

To enhance website accessibility, you need to choose the colors that can catch the eyes of the visitors. People who have visual impairments, poor vision, and color blindness can’t access poor color combinations. If you provide bad color contrasts, it can adversely affect the reading experience of the users. If you face any color contrast problems, you can utilize different tools, like WordPress plugins.

Check Broken and Empty Links

If your website has broken or empty links, it can have a very bad effect on the user experience. Such links can confuse the user as they can lead them nowhere. Such links are not related to website accessibility but they can indirectly affect it and give a bad user experience. This will create problems for users with cognitive disabilities as they rely on predictable website behavior. Empty or broken links create confusion and frustration while interacting with the website.

You need to monitor all the web pages for empty or broken links as the used text determines the accessibility of the link. This will make sure that your website is user-friendly and easily accessible for visitors, especially those with disabilities.

Using Correct Fonts

Other major elements to make a website accessible are font style and sizes. There are some assistive technologies like screen readers that can interpret the text for visually impaired users. If you want to make this process easy, you should choose the right and comprehensible font style.

Font style can be a preference for common users, but it is about accessibility for specially-abled users. Hence, you should not use fancy fonts, and keep them dark and in simple fonts with a light-colored background.

Accessible Forms and Table

If the content on your website has forms and tables, there is a need to make them accessible to all types of users. There is a need to make all components of tables accessible, like,

• Drop down menus
• Text boxes
• Checkboxes

Other than this, each table has a text-based format or descriptive HTML. You should give an auto-fill option for signup forms and purchase forms. With this, users or visitors can purchase without any hurdle. If you implement such options, you can easily make your website inclusive and accessible.

Conclusion

Making a website more accessible not only helps you to reach a wider audience but also benefits specially-abled people. Making a website ADA-compliant is an ongoing process, so try to monitor the website regularly.

Accessibility is one of the key aspects to tap the wider target audience. As you know there is fierce competition in the online market, so if you want to beat this competition, you should make a website more accessible for all users.

All the given tips will help you to make your website more accessible. If you take care of all the accessibility standards, you can easily create a well-accessible website.

Upma is an SEO executive at JoomDev. She is passionate about helping businesses grow and turning ideas into reality. She has experience as an ADA website compliance consultant. She can ensure any project’s success.

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