How to make your website more accessible

1 in 6  Australians have a disability. The figure, from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, means that approximately 4.4 million Aussies, or 18% of the population, benefit from accessible design and thinking.

One area that is often overlooked is the accessibility of digital platforms, including websites.

For people with auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical or visual needs, a badly designed website can be a real barrier to engaging with the world.

To assist people with disabilities navigate websites, technologies such as screen readers to vocalise the text on each page are used, as well as speech recognition software that converts speech into text. This means that it’s possible for almost anybody to browse the web. However, not all websites are designed with these things in mind.

Making your website accessible

To improve the usability of your site and to speak to a broad range of potential customers, it’s important that your business implements best website accessibility practices.

First off, it’s important to note that one of the most important things you need to do is choose the right Content Management System (CMS) to run your site on. And when it comes to accessibility, WordPress is fantastic and includes many accessibility features and plugins.

3 ways to improve your website accessibility using WordPress

1. Add alternative text to images

When uploading an image to WordPress, there’s an option to provide alternative text.

In this field, you should describe the image and give context. This will allow screen readers to describe the picture to someone who is visually impaired.

2. Use headings to structure content

Headings are crucial to improving the flow of content on your website, as well as making it easier to understand.

Heading options on WordPress can be found in the dropdown called ‘paragraph’.

3. Colour

It’s important to consider what colours you use on your website, in particular, how the colours contrast against each other so that different elements on the page are clear. Ideally, you should set a dark colour against a light one.

Online tools such as WebAIM and Contrast Checker allows you to find and test colour combinations.

Web accessibility matters

By taking the time to understand web accessibility and possible flaws in your design and content, you are one step closer to welcoming more users to your website. Not only will your users thank you, but you’ll also likely see benefits in the form of increased traffic and conversions, and most of these changes will benefit your organic SEO as well.

Cannings Purple – WordPress Development

Our WordPress development experts build your site using the latest principals, and on a clean SEO-friendly, flexible content management system. We know that not all WordPress is created equal.

As an expert WordPress development agency, we go to great lengths to ensure complete customisation of your WordPress. This makes it easier and cleaner for you to manage.

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