Is Your Website Accessible?
Does your business have a website? I bet it does. But is that site as accessible to everyone as it could be?
A recent report by Nomensa has highlighted the fact that nearly all retail-focused sites are failing to cater for disabled online visitors. Even if you don’t sell products or services on the web, websites are increasingly becoming the first point of contact many people have with a company. Can you afford to put people off at the first hurdle?
Making your site accessible doesn’t have to break the bank either. By following a few simple guidelines, set up by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), you can go a long way to letting everyone make the most of your site. Some of these guidelines include:
- Simple, easy to read copy
- Re-sizable text
- Good contrast between text and background
- Meaningful alt-tags for images
- Minimal use of Flash-based technology or time-specific elements (such as scrolling text)
- Access keys to allow your site to be navigated without a mouse
- Hyperlink text that makes sense when read out of context (instead of the dreaded ‘click here’)
- Transcripts for any audio or video content
- Small image files to cater for those with slower machines
These, of course, are just basic tips. You can learn a lot more by reading the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be a teccy to understand it.
You wouldn’t turn your disabled customers away from your bricks and mortar premises, so make sure you’re not doing it online.
