Guide to Website Accessibility

How accessible are your websites to the user experience you want? Are they accessible or are they usable by all? Here is a guide that helps you understand what accessibility means and how to make your website more accessible.

What is web accessibility?

Web accessibility is the practice of making web content available to everyone, regardless of the individual’s disability or device used. 

According to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), web content should be perceivable to anyone, regardless of what device or assistive technology they use.

Why should one consider web accessibility?

Today, websites are everywhere. They make up a huge portion of any business plan, strategy, and marketing. When building a website, it is to consider user experience and accessibility. 

According to AudioEye ADA compliance website checker gives confidence so that anyone can use it with confidence to identify legal Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) violations. 

Although there are tools that can help you find issues, it is highly recommended that you or your website maintenance team regularly review the guidelines. You can then improve accessibility at any time.

How is web accessibility enforced?

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics helps you obtain data about your visitors. This tool shows how many people are coming to your website, where they are coming from, what devices are they using, how long they stay on the site, and more. This information is crucial to understand your visitors and how to improve the user experience.

2. Google Image Search

If you want to know how your site is performing on Google Image Search, search for an image on your website and you will have information about where it was found, how many views it received, and other information from the web. This tool is also available in Authorship.

3. Alexa traffic statistics

Alexa’s website provides global website traffic data that can be used to track your online presence. Alexa tracks website traffic by analyzing over 1 billion HTTP requests per day from Alexa-enabled devices.

Web Accessibility Standards

For a website to be truly accessible, it should conform to one or more of the accessibility standards. Here are the most popular:

1. WCAG 1.0

WCAG 1.0 is an international standard developed by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative in 1999. It consists of a set of guidelines that can be applied to websites to make them more accessible, including:

Perceivable

Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.

Operable

User interface components and navigation must be operable.

Understandable

Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable.

Robust

Content, the user interface, and the relationship between them must all conform to WCAG 1.0.

2. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

WCAG 2.0 is another international standard that was updated by the W3C in 2008 to make websites more accessible.

Perceivable

Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.

Operable

User interface components and navigation must be operable. Content can provide, next to text links similar to the standard ways for user agent user interface components and navigation to be operable.

Understandable

Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable.

Robust

Content, the user interface, and the relationship between them must all conform to WCAG 2.0.

Web Accessibility Guidelines

WCAG is a set of guidelines that define standards for providing web accessibility. This guide provides information on out-of-date standards, how you can use your existing website to improve accessibility, and resources to help you take your site to the next level.

Conclusion

Web accessibility is a hot topic, and it is industry standard to have a website that follows accessibility standards. The resources provided in this guide will help you understand the importance of web accessibility and how to implement it on your website.