The 101 on Interface Accessibility
As the digital age of technology continues to expand, the need for accessible mobile apps and websites is more important than ever. In a world with 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide (Statista), and 1 billion people who idenify as having a disability, businesses need to understand the scale of their potential customer reach and aim for their websites to be as inclusive as possibe. Afterall, your website is the ideal platform to enforce your brand values and connect with your audience.
So how do you keep your website accesible? A good place to start, is to continously develop your SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. If you aren’t already familiar with SEO or perhaps want to remind yourself of what it is and how it works, then head over to our blog here for a refresher.
SEO works in unison with accessiblity as it ensures that you have:
1. A user-friendly website – this is critical to retaining customers and providing an overall positive experience. An article by Forbes, found that 71% of individuals with disabilities will abandon a website that’s difficult to use. If you require advice and assistance on how to make your website more inclusive, contact us today.
2. Clear titles – these help readers navigate your website more easily. It goes without saying, that tiny text and “hard to read” fonts can make it extremely difficult for users to find what they are looking for. Read our top tips below for the correct size and colour options you should use to optimise your users’ experience.
3. Descriptive-alt text – this is key for any images that you include on your website as it will help sight-impaired users understand content better.
As you can see, accessibility helps create a better customer experience for your users and boosts your SEO. This is important because the better your website looks and the more accessible it is, the more likely it will rank highly on Google’s search pages. Remember, organic search is still the most common way that users find your business.
Our Top Tips For Accessibilty
In order to cater to as many people as possible, it’s important to design an interface that is both simple and accessible. There are many options and techniques available to us to achieve this goal. To get you thinking about this, we’ve listed a few below:
Use Of Contrasting Colours
Make sure the text is visible and readable, by paying attention to your text and background colour. For an “advanced” approach, you can try putting green text on a blue background. It’s also important to note when a gradient is used that all the text is legible as the colour transitions.
Use An Appropriate Font Size
With the rise of mobile screens, it’s important to make sure text doesn’t become too small, squashed and unreadable by designing a theme that has a minimum text size. While there is no official text size for the web, the recommended size for good accessibility is 16px. For mobile devices, this means anything less than 12px is determined unreadable.
Identifiable Clickable Elements
Ensure hyperlinks are obvious, clear and large enough to click/tap. This can be done by using underlines or styling links as buttons.
Use Headings To Break Up Text
This is useful for a number of reasons:
- It helps SEO.
- It makes it easier for a user to read and…
- – it makes the content much more navigable.
Using Alt-Text For Images
Alt-text is a short, written description of an image. This is very important for screen readers, particularly, for visually-impaired users. So, it’s important to make sure the alt-text is relevant to the image used.
Clearly Labelled Form Elements
When using a form for contacts or anything else, it’s important to make sure the fields are properly labelled and structured. Many browsers now use these field labels to help a user auto-fill data.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to accessibility, clarity is key. Implementing these different techniques will help you develop a more engaging and enjoyable experience for your users. This will also reduce the likelihood of people abandoning your website, which will reduce the bounce rate.
Has this got your thinking about your own SEO performance? If so, then get in touch with us today and find out how we can help.
Image: Dots Vectors by Vecteezy