When challenged by a disability, every image, sound, button or link could become a hurdle. Accounting for accessibility within your website design will not only prevent a possible discrimination lawsuit, but will improve your company's bottom line by providing equal access to ALL potential customers. Making a website as accommodating as possible will benefit everyone who uses it, so there's no reason to not optimize its accessibility.
So if you're wondering how to make your website accessible for everyone, here's what were talking about...
“Web accessibility is the practice of removing barriers that prevent people with disabilities from accessing and interacting with sites. When sites are designed, developed and written with web accessibility in mind, everyone has equal access to online information, products, and opportunities.”
56.7 million people or 19% of the population in the United States reported having a disability in the 2010 census. Websites may fail to reach this chunk of the population if they are not optimized with accessibility in mind. When accommodating for accessibility, the four categories of disabilities that need to be accounted for are:
Read more from ConversionXL for an introduction to website accessibility.
“In 2017 alone, at least 814 federal lawsuits (including class actions) were filed against companies operating allegedly inaccessible websites. The number of lawsuits filed will continue to dramatically increase this year.”
From a legal standpoint, failing to optimize for accessibility may leave your company vulnerable to a lawsuit. There has been a rising amount of lawsuits alleging violations of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act against companies that fail to provide accommodations for disabled website users. Currently, this environment is a legal gray area and the law will be applied differently for each company.
To err on the side of caution, and to provide all users an equal experience, it's best to equip your website with accessibility functions. Check out Charles Marion's article for more detail on the current litigations concerning website accessibility.
“Web accessibility shouldn’t be viewed as another expense for your business. Rather, it should be viewed as an opportunity to expand your customer base and protect your business. Even more importantly, it’s an opportunity to make the internet a better place for everyone.”
Besides the motivation to avoid a lawsuit, having an accessible website will help your company's bottom line. While there is no data in analytics that tracks disabled users, we can estimate that roughly 10-20 percent of your users need accommodations to surf the web. That's too large of a segment of potential customers to miss out on!
Having a fully accessible website will not only save you from litigation but will ultimately provide all your users an equal opportunity when navigating the web which will translate into more sales. Take a look at Nathaniel Tower's article that goes more into detail about the benefits of website accessibility such as avoiding expensive litigation expenses and why it should be a priority for your business.
“Web-based website accessibility evaluation tools are a handy resource for anyone who wants to ensure that the site they are developing meets established accessibility standards.”
So now that the importance of website accessibility has been addressed, where do you start? Lucky for you, there are many tools out there that will test your website and score them based on how accessible they are. This will provide your website a great benchmark on what needs to be improved. Gathered in this list are 10 free website tools that only require a website URL to provide an accessibility score. It's that simple!
“The UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, defines access to information, including the web, as a human right.”
Check out this great video by W3C where they discuss the Web Accessibility Initiative and the various types of accommodations that a website can provide. This video is a great visual of the importance of accessibility.
Experts On The Wire is a weekly SEO podcast hosted by Dan Shure where he discusses new trends, tactics, tools, and people doing remarkable work in the world of SEO. In this episode, Dan invites a guest who is an expert in UX web design, where they discuss the benefits of accessibility and how it will improve your SEO rankings. Give it a listen!
“You won't just be making your site better for those with disabilities, you will be making it better for everyone”
Sometimes to understand a concept fully, it helps to see the big picture. Check out this amazing infographic that illustrates all the different strategies available to better make your website more accessible for all users. It even includes the do's and don'ts of overall web design and how it relates to accessibility.
With the tools and information readily available, the most important part is implementing them into a strategy that will provide all users with an equal opportunity to navigate a webpage. With the numerous reasons to implement full website accessibility, get started now by testing the accessibility of your website!
To best optimize your website, it's important to have a full understanding of who your customers are and how they will use your website. Get this workbook for step by step help creating buyer persona profiles for your business.
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