As a website editor, you may spend a lot of time thinking about your content, your writing, and even images and videos. Here is one more thing you should think about, web accessibility. There are many reasons why you should care about web accessibility. In this article, I will show you why it is important, and hopefully convince you to think about web accessibility when you edit your site.
It’s the right thing to do
The web is a very important resource for many people, so it is important that your website is structured in a way that provide equal access to information to people with diverse abilities. As Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, puts it: “The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
It enhances user experience
Things like closed caption, easier navigation, and alternative texts are accessibility features but at the same time, it enhances user experience.
Closed captions and transcripts are very useful for users who have hearing issues, at the same time, it is also very helpful for users who are in the situation where they can’t listen to the audio or for users who simply like to have captions for videos.
Easier navigation improves accessibility for everyone visiting your website. A study showed that 40% of consumers will abandon an online resource if they can’t quickly and easily find the information they’re looking for.
Alternative texts describe an image, so people using screen reader can “read” the image. But alternative texts are also used when internet connection is slow. When internet connect is slow, rather than trying to load the image, the website will load the alternative texts.
As you can see from above examples, web accessibility is not only helpful for people with disability. It also enhances user experience.
It improves SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) has always been a bit confusing for many people. And even if you know what you need to do, you may not have the permission to do those things as a content editor. But do you know that improving web accessibility also improves SEO?
Header formatting is important for accessibility because it helps screen reader user to skip to the parts that are relevant to them. Headers are also a critical element in SEO. A good header formatting can help contents to match up with users. It can also provide answer to users without the user clicking on the link. For example, the screenshot below appeared when I googled “Trent tuition deadline”
Titles help screen reader users to comprehend the content, it is the first thing the is read to a user by screen reader, but it is also important for SEO. According to Moz, a marketing analytic software company, “Your title tag determines your display title in search engine result pages, and is a visitor’s first experience of your site.” So, it is important that the title accurately reflect the content on that page.
Not only these two accessibility features are important for SEO, alternative text, transcript, anchor text, etc. they are play a part in accessibility and SEO.
