Posted on 03/09/2022 at 10:00 AM
Is your website design costing you over 15 million potential users? If it's not WCAG compliant, then the answer is yes! Around 8.1 million Americans have a vision impairment and 7.6 million have some form of hearing impairment. WCAG compliance ensures that users with some form of hearing or visual impairment are still able to fully access the information on your website. We've compiled a guide for easy ways you can make your website meets WCAG guidelines.
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. WCAG covers not only visual and hearing impairments, but also cognitive, learning, language, and other disabilities. Following WCAG guidelines helps ensure that your website is user-friendly for anyone and everyone. Understanding WCAG accessibility is important not only for web designers and web developers but for anyone who is adding content to a website.
WCAG guidelines are organized into four principles.
Under each of these four principles falls a number of specific guidelines. Under each of the guidelines, there are a number of success criteria. Please note: this guide does not cover every single facet of WCAG compliance, simply examples that are easy for those who do not have advanced web design and development experience to incorporate.
For non-text content, the content must be able to be available in other forms that are accessible to people with different disabilities. This can include:
For audio and video content, it must be accessible to those with a variety of impairments. Easy ways to incorporate this include:
All content (or as much as possible) should be created in a manner that can be presented in a variety of ways while still retaining core information. This can include:
Content should be easy to discern from other content without strain or difficulty. Ways to achieve this:
Any functionality must be able to be done with a keyboard. This includes stipulations such as:
Users must have enough time to read and use content despite any limitations they may have. If there are time limitations set on any of your content, allow options for:
Avoid including any content on your website that can trigger any physical reactions such as seizures. Avoid flashes and ensure any video content that is set to autoplay would not trigger any adverse reactions.
Provide multiple easy ways for website visitors to find the content they are looking for.
This facet deals with making it easier to accomplish functions with a keyboard. One of the easiest ways to incorporate this is ensuring that path-based gestures can be done with a single pointer.
This is one of the most clear-cut WCAG principles and is also one of the easiest to implement.
Content is not overcomplex for your target audience, avoids niche or uncommon abbreviations, and aims for making your content easy to read and follow.
Make your web pages function in standard, predictable ways and are not overcomplex or unusual. Navigation and functionality should also be clear and consistent throughout your entire website.
This guideline deals with helping users avoid making mistakes on your website while also allowing them to correct mistakes they may make. Ways to account for this include:
Robust guidelines are more complex and may require the assistance of web development services. The main success criterion includes parsing, name/role/value, and status messages. If you are not versed in markup languages, the best way to address this category without employing a web development company would be to focus on the above areas, which are more straightforward.
The most important and inherent benefit of being WCAG compliant is making your website content more accessible to the entire population. However, it does include other user benefits as well as SEO benefits.
Many of the WCAG guidelines (such as clear navigation, layout, etc.) also contribute to the overall user-friendliness of your website. It encourages users to stay on the page longer, interact more with your content, and avoid frustration and confusion.
There are also many search engine optimization benefits that come with WCAG compliance. Alt text on images can help your images pop up under the "images" section in search engines. Descript anchor text on your hyperlinks helps Google crawlers better understand your content. Specific headers and bolded key points can help boost your website's search engine rankings. And the list goes on and on!
Global Reach offers expert website management services to ensure your website is meeting WCAG guidelines. Global Reach will scan your website, find gaps in compliance, and fix them for you! With our website hosting services on our CMS platform, SiteViz, we ensure your website is Section 508, WCAG, and ADA compliant, unlike generic website templates on the market.
Categories: Search Engine Optimization, Web Development, Website Tips