Almost every business has a website. So making sure your website is accessible to everyone is important. This includes people with disabilities, according to companies like accessiBe. You can do many things to make sure your mobile website is accessible.
What is Web Accessibility?
Web accessibility allows everyone to have access to information on the internet, regardless of skills or disabilities. However, this means that the website must be optimized for people with visual and mobility-related disabilities (i.e., blindness, low vision, limited dexterity).
Why Should My Website Be Accessible?
Accessibility allows all users equal access to information on your website. This means that the website is compatible with a wide range of assistive technologies, such as screen readers and screen magnification tools.
What Makes a Website Accessible?
There are many things that you can do to make your website more accessible, such as using cleartext HTML, semantic markup (meaning no use of graphics), avoiding the use of scripts/java/etc., making sure all images have ALT-text, not relying on color alone for meaning, and ensuring navigational elements are obvious.
How Do I Check My Mobile Website For Accessibility?
To test your mobile website for accessibility, you can use various tools. One such tool is Mobile Web-AIM Analyzer. The analyzer checks for several items related to web accessibility, including usage of format-attribute, deprecated elements, and properties.
How to Check for Web Accessibility Issues?
If you run into web accessibility issues, you can use HTML-Tidy to clean up the code. You should also check your website in different browsers and tools like Mobile-AIM Analyzer or WAVE.
How to Fix Web Accessibility Issues?
If you run into web accessibility issues, you can use a few quick fixes to help improve the user experience for disabled users. For example, if the foreground color of the website is largely dominant over other colors and contrasts poorly with background colors, it might be difficult for users with low vision or color blindness to distinguish what they’re supposed to focus on.
One such fix is to use CSS instead of HTML for structure and styling. Another quick fix is to make forms and buttons accessible by giving them a unique ID or role, like “go” or “submit.” You can use WAVE to test these elements, along with others. For example, the checkboxes should be tested to ensure a “WAV-check” class.
How can I get more information on Web Accessibility?
The W3C has some informative documents about web accessibility, such as the WAI WCAG Overview and the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Draft. The CDC also has some sections on their website that are helpful for web accessibility, such as the Disability and Communication Preferences page.
As a business owner, you must make sure that your website is accessible to everyone. Web accessibility means improving the user experience for disabled users by making structures and styling semantic (meaning no use of images), avoiding the use of scripts/java/etc., ensuring navigational elements are obvious, using CSS instead. You should also use tools like Mobile-AIM or WAVE when checking for issues that might arise.