7 Tips To Make Your Website Super
Accessible
Accessibility is a crucial factor in website designing.
Investing thoughts and elements on how the website
looks is all well but what is more important is how
accessible the it is to visitors and prospective customers.
An ideal website design focuses on letting the visitors
attain a higher level of accessibility into the website.
Here are some tips that can help you create a website
design that allows visitors to come through with minimal
troubles:
ALT Text
Do make sure to include meaningful ALT text in your
website design. Visually impaired users are able to
browse through the site when their screen readers
read aloud the ALT text. With the ALT text missing
from your website design, your website will potentially
be unusable for your blind visitors and you could
end up losing out on potential customers.
Correct Spellings
Screen readers are not able to pronounce words that
are misspelled. So, if the content of your website
has any spelling errors the screen readers will completely
ignore the word and the sentence will make no sense
to the user. Visually impaired users have a sense
of your web design through what the screen readers
portray. And if they have a bad impression, you stand
to lose business.Avoid AbbreviationsAs much as you
can, avoid using abbreviations. Just like screen readers
don't recognize spelling errors, the same way it fails
to know abbreviated words. They try to spell it out
and end up pronouncing some undecipherable word. For
example you might be able to know that 'eg' is example
but the screen reader may pronounce it as 'egg.' Thus,
it is always better to use good website design practices
to make life easier for your users.
Contrasting Colors for Text
Dark text on a light or white background is the tried
and tested best for most people as it increases readability.
Even if you are using other colors make sure to keep
the text color in dark contrast to the background.
Readable Text
Make your text resizable so that people with poor
eyesight are able to resize the content matter to
suit them.
Colors and CSS
Adjust the colors of your website using web design
solutions such as CSS. Thus, if by chance visitors
find your default stylesheet hard to use, they can
turn it off and use their own stylesheet.
Sensible Links
Make sure that all the links on your website make
sense even out of context. Visually impaired people
often skip through the links on a page. Links like
'Click here' does not make any sense to them. rather
try framing 'Click here for more information about
website design.' This would tell them what exactly
are they for.
About the Author:
Maneet Puri is the Director of LeXolution IT Services,
a leading web
design firm in India that specializes in web designing
and development, website maintenance and internet
promotion. With 10 years of industry experience to
boast of Maneet advises his clients on hiring offshore
web designing services
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