Accessibility is something that needs to be a big consideration for any business. It can be easy to set up a business that suits people that look like you and talk like you, and can do things like you; but what about everyone else?
Accessibility needs to be part of the whole design process that you have as a business, particularly for things like your business website as it is the first point of call for many.
Having a website that can be used on a range of devices, as well as used by a wide range of people is important.
It is also important to think about and remember that accessibility isn’t just something for beginners or the less tech-savvy; you need to also consider accessible designs, and considering people with varying levels of mobility, hearing, vision, and intellectual capabilities.
Easy Navigation
If you want to make your business website more accessible, then here are some of the things that you can do. It is so important to make sure that content on your website is logical, and can be easily navigated through the use of a keyboard.
Some of your website visitors can have mobility disabilities, and as a result, won’t be able to use a mouse or a laptop trackpad. Instead, they would use the site using only the keyboard arrow and tab buttons. So run through your site; does the tab order match up to the visual order so that things are clear and logical?
Use Alt Text For Images
Using alt text for images is one of the main ways that you can easily make anything visual on the website, much more accessible. Search engine crawls don’t actually see images, so it is a good idea to have images backed up by alt text, to say what they are about.
Not only can it help your SEO, but it can also help someone with vision impairment to know what is on the screen, and help those using speech input software and screen readers. When images aren’t loading, such as on a mobile version of the site, users can still know what is meant to be there too.
Use Video
Using video is important on a business website. You might have some embedded videos in your content to show what you do, a little bit about the team, or even a behind-the-scenes video about what you do in the office or warehouse.
Make sure that your videos are captioned! This can be a benefit to a number of people, but especially those with hearing loss. You could also look to install something like video chat software on your website.
Not everyone will be able to type an email or type quickly on a live chat forum. So instead, a more accessible option could be video chat. You can find out more details online about the kinds of platforms that you could use for this. Whatever you choose, it can be a good way to help your website to be more accessible.
Implementing these things for your website will not only help to improve the accessibility, but it will also help search engines to be able to understand your site better. This can help your website rankings on search, so there are a number of reasons why this is a good thing to do.
