Accessibility Upgrades For Small Business Websites
I’ve been having conversations with clients and doing research into accessibility + ADA compliance for small business websites. Sounds super exciting, right? Well whether it’s exciting or not, it's important. So I wanted to share some of the things I’m learning and 5 easy accessibility upgrades you can make to your web design so that together we can all pitch in to help the online world become a more accessible place.
First, what is ADA compliance?
ADA stands for The Americans with Disabilities Act and it recommends that every business follow their compliance standards. It’s in place so people who are disabled can have the same access to the same things that everyone else does. In a physical space this means things like ramps, automatic doors, or braille on signs. On TV and movies it's closed captions. In an online space it tends to be geared towards people with visual disabilities. Why is that important? From a practical standpoint, you could be sued for having an inaccessible website. This whole issue was brought to my attention by a client who told me about Denver businesses currently being sued. But more importantly, on a human level we should all be striving to make things accessible for other humans no matter how abled they are.
Now before I share my insights, I need to tell you how challenging this has been. The internet guidelines are fairly vague and hard to understand even for someone like me who designs small business websites for a living. And some of the guidelines aren’t even possible unless you’re a programmer who can custom code it into the infrastructure of your site. Big disclaimer in all capital letters: I AM IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM AN EXPERT ON THIS. I’m just one human person, doing my best with the information + capabilities that I have, and hoping to make the smallest bit of difference in the world.
5 easy accessibility upgrades you can make to your small business website
Keep aware of legibility. That refers to how easy it is to read a site's text, making sure the font size is big enough (16pts minimum), and ensuring there’s enough contrast between the color of the type and the background.
Change the way you write when incorporating a link into text. Sometimes you’ll say something like: Click here to get in touch. But screen readers don’t have the ability to see where "here" is and click on it. So instead say something like: Get more information on our contact page.
Write descriptive image captions. Again, for those people who are vision impaired and using screen readers, they obviously can’t see the pictures. That’s why it’s important to have a brief description of what the picture is so they can get your full website experience.
Also related to images, don’t put text in photos where the computer robots can’t read it. If you do have to have text within an image, sometimes that’s just necessary for one reason or another, be sure to explicitly write it out in the image caption.
Install an accessibility widget. The widget from User Way lets people do things like reverse the colors on your site for easier reading, increase text size/spacing, pause animations, highlight links, and even has a dyslexic-friendly setting. They have an amazing free tier so you can easily add it to your own website, it's easy to customize + install, PLUS they draft an accessibility statement for you if you don't have one. I highly recommend this and I’ll be offering this installation complimentary to any clients who are interested.
Like I said in big bold letters I’m definitely no expert and this absolutely isn't legal advice. If you or someone you know is disabled and/or has any feedback on what we (or me personally as a web designer) could be doing to make websites more accessible I would love to listen and do my best to help in the future. Let me know what you’re doing to make your small business website more accessible or if there’s anything else that you recommend I build into my web design process or if you’re planning to take action on any of these!
