Ignoring this important part of your site could hurt your search engine rankings

While many businesses value accessibility in principle, implementing it in specific ways that may profit each your customers and your business can seem daunting. Online presence, in particular, is an area where accessibility is often missed. One study found that 95% of web sites do not meet the accessibility standards required by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Some of the downsides to not being fully accessible are obvious, including legal ramifications, negative branding, and a lack of engagement and support for people with disabilities. While accessibility is undoubtedly a good thing in itself and could also be legally required depending on your location, it also impacts your site’s web optimization.

Accessibility and web optimization

Many businesses don’t realize that they’re wasting their web optimization efforts if they don’t prioritize accessibility. The level of accessibility your site provides significantly impacts conversion rates, rankings, and organic traffic. One study found that prioritizing accessibility solutions led to “12% average increase in overall traffic.”

Technically speaking, accessibility is an aspect of user experience, something that Google takes into account in rankings. Since web optimization campaigns involve rebuilding your site and improving the user experience, they are one of the best opportunities to implement an accessibility strategy and effectively achieve many of your brand goals.

To minimize accessibility errors on your website while improving your search engine rankings, it’s important to grasp the principles of accessibility and a few key starting points for creating a search engine friendly website.

4 principles of accessibility

Accessibility principles come from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While the act applies to greater than just web sites, its principles are helpful guidelines for creating an web optimization campaign that prioritizes accessibility.

• Visible: All users should find a way to access and understand your site content. This requires accommodating users with various speech, hearing, or cognitive abilities.
• Feasible: Your website have to be easy to navigate and use for disabled users.
• Understandable: Both the content and structure of your website must be easy to grasp.
• Reliable: A solid website works quickly and easily, without disruptions to accessibility tools like alt text or captions. It must even be easy to adapt as accessibility guidelines and tools evolve.

7 Ways to Start Improving Your Website’s Accessibility

While the principles of accessibility are fairly general, there are some very specific steps you possibly can take to begin creating an accessible website.

1. Make sure your website is compatible with assistive technologies: Many people use assistive technologies to access web sites, especially if they have vision problems. Modifying HTML elements to make your site compatible with technologies is crucial to meeting accessibility requirements. Many corporations rely on web optimization experts or accessibility widgets to satisfy these standards.
2. Implementing transcription and captions to make sure video accessibility: Transcriptions and captions allow people with hearing disabilities to interact with your content. Additionally, search engines will have an easier time understanding and indexing your content if you include captions.
3. Enter alternative text: If your website relies too heavily on images, without alt text, your content shall be inaccessible to many users and harder for search engines to index. Provide clear alt text for visual content to eliminate this error.
4. Rate readability: One of the most typical accessibility mistakes is not providing adequate color contrast. You can use the color contrast test tool to make sure that the contrast on your page is not too low or too high.
5. Reorganize navigation: Reorganizing the structure and navigation of a website improves user experience and indexability. Elements corresponding to title tags, page titles, header structure, and breadcrumb navigation must be optimized to extend click-through rates and accessibility.
6. Find the guidelines to follow: Before you start, it’s important to know which guidelines apply to you. These guidelines can aid you develop specific accessibility goals. Many sites must meet WCAG 2 Level AA guidelines, in addition to other national guidelines corresponding to ADA. To stay compliant, make sure you not sleep up to now, as these laws and guidelines change continually.
7. Use accessibility audit tools: Identifying and fixing accessibility errors on your own will be difficult. Consider using accessibility audit tools or hiring an web optimization firm that has in-depth knowledge of your current accessibility practices.

Accessibility is a worthwhile investment for your business from many perspectives. An accessible website shall be easier to navigate for all of your users, in addition to search engines. This increases user engagement, lowers bounce rates, and increases organic traffic. Keep your business compliant with accessibility guidelines and increase engagement with web users of all abilities by prioritizing accessibility as part of your web optimization efforts.