What is Website Accessibility?
Imagine you invited guests to a party, but some of them couldn’t get in because the front door was too narrow– they’d feel excluded, right? Website accessibility is similar to that scenario, but in the digital realm. It’s about making your website usable for everyone, regardless of physical or cognitive abilities.
Website accessibility means creating an online environment that everyone can navigate, understand, and interact with. It takes into account the needs of users with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities.
Why Should You Care About Website Accessibility?
No business should approach website accessibility as a means of ticking off a box on a checklist. Disabled users depend on the web as much as anyone else, and yet website accessibility isn’t viewed as a priority, but as an option.
Your brand’s reputation isn’t solely built on its products or services, but also on its social responsibility. Your business could become a leader in online accessibility.
How Can Your Business Benefit From Website Accessibility?
Your website serves as a virtual storefront. You would want your physical storefront to be accessible to all customers, and your website should be no different!
Let’s go over some benefits of website accessibility:
Expanded Customer Base: Almost 15% of the world’s population experiences some form of disability. Ignoring website accessibility means that your business could lose out on a substantial audience and potential customers.
Enhanced User Experience: An accessible website accommodates users with disabilities and improves their user experience. Accommodating users with disabilities could mean adding alt text to images, offering alternate style sheets with enlarged fonts, or making sure your URLs are descriptive so that users using screen readers can easily navigate your website.
Improved SEO: Many accessibility practices, including alt text for images and semantic HTML, align with SEO best practices, and could boost your site’s visibility on search engines.
Legal Compliance: In several regions, including the U.S., businesses are legally required to ensure their websites are accessible to avoid lawsuits and hefty fines.
How Iceberg Web Design Can Help
At Iceberg Web Design, we help businesses create and improve their website accessibility. Whether you want to boost your site’s accessibility or you’re looking to build an accessible website from the ground up, give us a call and we’ll discuss the next steps to getting the accessible website you want.
Our website accessibility service includes:
Accessibility Audit: The Iceberg team partners with experts to provide you with a comprehensive accessibility audit of your website. We’ll identify the barriers that might be preventing some users from effectively browsing your website, and create an action plan to improve your website’s accessibility.
Accessibility Remediation: Based on the audit results, we’ll implement the necessary updates and changes to make your site more accessible. Some of these changes could include adjusting your site’s color contrast, adding alt text to images, enabling keyboard-friendly navigation, and more.
We Keep Website Accessibility Simple
Let Iceberg Web Design drive more traffic to your website by removing the barriers that keep disabled users away.
Have any questions, concerns, or simply want to learn more about website accessibility? Don’t hesitate. Contact us today and we’ll help you get started on your path to an accessible website!
