When you’re brainstorming how to develop your online presence, website accessibility may not be the top of your priority. It’s a somehow vague term that’s often linked to people who experience physical disability. What happens is that many website creators fail to consider whether the website can be accessed by everyone.

When we say about website accessibility, we’re talking about people’s ability to access and utilize resources on the internet regardless of any type or severity of the disability. Visual impairment and deafness are just a few conditions that limit people’s ability to freely access the web. It’s more about doing the best you can to ensure that people have a positive experience whether or not they have a handicap.

You need to put considerable effort if you really want to make a website accessible to all. Making poor choices regarding website accessibility can limit the number of people who can use your website as you originally intended for. This can lead to lower engagement, lost profit, and a decrease in your key metrics. In this article, we’ll share with you some tips on how to improve your website accessibility and benefit from such.

Headings & Page Structure

An improved page structure is the first step towards better website accessibility. Screen readers help people with visual impairments access page content and screen readers are designed to pick out several elements.

Headings & Titles

Each website page should contain a clear title. This helps your SEO and marketing goals but also allows screen readers to easily break down the content to help users understand it. Clear headings and titles also give the website a better structure.

Avoid bolding, underlines, and italics if you want to create structure since assistive technologies find it difficult to detect these style changes. If the screen reader is moving too fast, it may also miss these kinds of changes. Use H1, H2, H3 elements to make it more distinct.

Font Selection

There are fonts that are easy on the eyes and can be read without any problem and there are fonts that make you squint for better understanding. Not everyone can easily decipher cursive fonts or ones that imitate handwriting. It’s better to use large fonts in a regular style to help improve readability and lower bounce rate.

Font Space

Spacing includes the space between each letter, word, and line. Ensure that the space between each word is wide enough to make separate different words. Line spacing should also be big enough so that lowercase letters like “p”, “g”, and “q”, do not mix into the line that follows. A rule of thumb is to set your font height and line-height 1:1.5

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are often assigned a different color from regular non-linked texts on a website. Even with website builders, you can also choose which color you want for your hyperlinks. When using hyperlinks, it’s important to describe what resource you’re linking to so that your viewers know what they should expect when they click on a link.

Video and Audio Elements

Although technology has come a long way, there are still some challenges when it comes to parsing information from a website. This often happens with video or audio elements. When dealing with this kind of media, you can publish transcripts for the audio or video so that the screen reader can extract the text.

If transcripts are too demanding, you can create text summaries instead. This way, your visitors can still have an idea of the content despite not having access to the audio or video itself. Transcripts and summaries can also help your website rank better in search engines.

Alt tags for images

Strategic use of images is a great way to make your website stand out from the rest. Website photos can also help deliver your story better, exhibit your products and services, and talk about complicated topics. Images can be a great help but there are viewers who can interact or see them in the first place.

Fill in the alt text field when you use images for your website. The alternative text is embedded in the image’s HTML code and will be detected by screen readers or displayed on the site if the image does not load. Spend time to ensure that your alt text helps the reader understand the image.

Color palette

Lastly, choosing the right colors for your website will help improve accessibility. Brands often use the same colors in their logos and names for their website so that viewers will know that they’re in the right place. A good mix of colors can make your website stand out from the rest.

If you can’t change the color palette for your website, you can choose colors that are still in line with your brand guidelines. Most companies and brands have a few colors and gradients to choose from. When building a website, consider how your color choices look when used together. Do you want to apply these colors when making charts? Do the colors contrast with the background when applied to call to action buttons? Avoid using low contrast colors together since it increases the difficulty for colorblind people. Low contrast pairs are orange and yellow, blue and purple, and some shades of brown and green.