Making a WordPress website more accessible should be a top priority for business owners. Luckily, it doesn’t require them to acquire extensive knowledge for it. With tools like Xcompliant, businesses can easily make their WordPress accessible to a diverse range of audience.
As a business owner, you should know that website accessibility is a continuous process. Developers build a website and keep working on it to make it WordPress ADA-compliant. They also follow a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) checklist to make web content more accessible.
So, if you want to make your website accessible, keep reading this article to learn some tips and tricks to achieve your goals.
What Is Website Accessibility?
Do you know that over 60% of adults with a disability own a computer, laptop, smartphone, or all of them? They look for a website that is more accessible to them. That might include:
- Screen reader for visually impaired users
- Keyboard functionality for physically challenged users
- Translated text for users with cognitive disabilities
WordPress accessibility is not only for the disabled community. When you make a website accessible, you improve its usability for all users on the internet. Therefore, don’t confine yourself by thinking about disabled users while making your website accessible.
The purpose of website accessibility is to improve the user experience for the following users:
- People with visual disabilities
- Physically challenged users (arm injury etc.)
- Users who have small-screen smartphones
- Users who don’t have access to high-speed internet
Another reason web developers run for WordPress ADA-compliant websites is accessibility is a human right. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became a civil rights law to support the disabled community.
ADA compliance aims to make technology accessible to everyone. That’s why federal agencies get penalized from $55,000 – $110,000 if they don’t comply with ADA section 508 non-compliance.
We never know when the government will enforce a similar law for commercial websites. Before that happens, let’s see how to make your WordPress website more accessible.
How To Make Your WordPress Website Accessible?
Remember that you can’t make a website 100% accessible by installing a plugin or modifying a piece of code. Accessibility depends on the technical and the user side. However, the latter weighs more because WordPress accessibility varies from user to user.
You must focus on the user’s review of how they interact with your website. So, you can’t make your website fully accessible if you don’t understand every user’s requirements.
But the good news is that you can build or modify your website on WordPress ADA-compliant by following WCAG 2.1, a global accessibility solution. These guidelines were made after taking suggestions from international individuals, organizations, and governments.
The following are the key accessibility features you must consider for your website.
Accessible Design
Web designing goes in parallel with development. The following are some best practices of WordPress accessibility design.
Images
Adding visual and graphical content to your website is a smart approach. Search engines also encourage you to add images to your website for a better user experience. However, you must remember that people with visual disabilities can’t easily comprehend images.
Some users who don’t have good internet browsers also can’t display images. Therefore, keeping in mind their requirements, you must include alternative (aka alt) text with every image you upload. Alt text is a one-liner statement that describes what the image is all about.
For example, if your website offers accessibility solutions like Xcompliant, add images of disabled users browsing a website and write relevant alt text. Besides, many social media platforms allow you to add alt text to your uploaded media content.
Text
Readable content provides information to your website visitors. But what if someone suffering from a visual or cognitive impairment wants to read that information?
For such users, you take care of the following text formatting:
- Size
- Color
- Style
- Headings
According to WCAG 2.1, you should keep your web content font size to 12 points (pts). For the font color, set a suitable contrast that is not unpleasant to the eyes. Furthermore, you can use Arial, as it’s the simplest sans-serif (without serifs) font.
Don’t forget to use headings to help users easily navigate your content and find relevant information.
Color
Choosing colors for your website is challenging, especially if you want to make the website WordPress ADA-compliant. The purpose of website colors should be to:
- Present your brand personality
- Distinguish website features
- Make your website appealing
For example, food delivery or restaurant businesses use a brown or gray spectrum for their website color. However, choosing a website color must follow the WordPress accessibility standard.
According to the WordPress project standard, the luminosity contrast should be 4.5:1 for normal text.
Background
Visually impaired users need a clean website background to easily read the content. But how do you make a website background clean?
To enhance readability, you can set a suitable contrast between the foreground and background. You should also avoid using funky website backgrounds as it makes it difficult to read the web content, even for normal users.
Interactive Elements
The WordPress accessibility guidelines foster adding interactive elements to support internet users. The interactive elements help all the users in browning your website. Moreover, you can add these elements using JavaScript.
Here are some interactive elements that enhance website accessibility.
Click
You can set the mouse functionality to “hover,” “click,” and “focus” as you want. For example, the button’s color changes when the user hovers the pointer over a button. Similarly, when a user clicks an anchor text, the anchor text’s color changes.
Navigation
You can add a navigation tool by using different features to support users in finding their location on a website. For example, you can use Breadcrumb Navigation on your website. It’s a hierarchical address that displays the user’s current web page from the home page.
Interactive navigation tools are often used in ecommerce websites to help users proceed, go back, or jump to any web page they want.
Forms
Web-based or online forms should be interactive too. You can set alerts when a user enters the wrong input in a field. If your website only alerts users when they submit the form, that will be a poor user experience.
Therefore, add interactive alerts and labels on online forms to enhance WordPress accessibility for the users.
How To Test WordPress Website Accessibility?
Once you make your website WordPress ADA-compliant, there’s one more step before you take a sigh of relief. Website accessibility experts like Xcompliant suggest testing your website’s performance according to the WCAG and ADA checklists. Here’s how.
Automated Test
You can use automated accessibility testing for your website if you are new to this domain. The automated testing tools will carry out the following tests:
- Color contrast
- Font size
- Broken or empty links
- Alt text
- Table headings and more
The automated accessibility testing tool generates a list that identifies the problems in your website. You might give 10/10 to your website, but the code-based errors are only understandable by web developers and SQA engineers.
Remember that no automated website accessibility testing tool is perfect. Therefore, you must manually test your website to check its ADA compliance.
Manual Test
The best practice is to run manual tests on your website to get viable results. Since accessibility is about improving user experience, only real humans can give feedback on your website’s performance.
However, you must reserve time and resources to manually test your website because it might take longer than you plan.
Multi-platform Testing
You should check your website on different platforms, including:
- Public Wi-Fi
- Home Wi-Fi
- Ethernet connection
When you connect your device and load your website on different networks, you will identify areas of improvement. So, you can note down these errors in your website and fix them by making necessary changes.
Screen Reader
Check out the screen reader’s performance on your website for users with visual or cognitive disabilities. A screen reader reads your website’s content. So, ensure it’s reading the content loud enough and in simple language for disabled users.
Keyboard Functionality
Many users suffer from RSI (repetitive strain injury) or other motor impairments and can’t use a mouse. Therefore, you must enable and test the keyboard functionality on your website.
Ensure that users can browse your website without a mouse. All the keyboard’s keys must properly interact with your website for the best user experience.
Interactivity
The more interactive your website is, the better the user experience. So, test the interactive elements in your websites, like buttons, links, and alerts. These elements must interact with the users in the simplest way.
For example, you can highlight links, buttons, and navigation bars. You can also enable video or audio to play sound when you hover the mouse over it.
You can check out the WordPress accessibility guidelines on creating interactive elements using JavaScript for an enhanced user experience.
Final Words
You should work on making your WordPress website more accessible for normal and disabled users. By following the WCAG 2.1 checklist, you can educate your web developers on how to make your website WordPress ADA compliant.
So, take help from the above-mentioned WordPress accessibility tricks and make your website compliant with the standards.