Accessibility and Websites, the checklist of errors to fix
In its original and pure form, the Web is basically designed to work for all people “regardless of their hardware, software, language, location or skill”: this is the official position of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international non-governmental organization founded by Tim Berners-Lee (one of the fathers of the Web), which has as its goal the spreading of the maximum accessibility of sites, that is, the possibility to access information and content “to people with a wide range of hearing, motor, visual and cognitive abilities”. Yet, not all sites respect these principles and there are many obstacles that can create difficulties for users: these are the main problems related to accessibility, with a checklist of the interventions to be implemented on the site to overcome the critical issues.
Digital accessibility: numbers and critical issues
Accessibility is a crucial element to assess for developers and organizations who want to create high-quality websites and web tools that do not exclude people from the possibility of using their products and services.
However, all too often sites, applications, technologies or tools are incorrectly designed and create real barriers that prevent groups of people from using these products efficiently, similar to the physical obstacles that characterize many places in everyday reality.
In this way, we betray the concept of accessibility, which is precisely “the ability of computer systems to provide services and provide information that can be used, without discrimination, even by those who, due to disability, need assistive technologies or special configurations”. On a global level, it is estimated that there are over 1 billion people with disabilities – visual, auditory or cognitive – and this huge audience must also be added to the difficulties of access created by technology – for example, mobile browsing difficulties in areas poorly covered by the network, or use of obsolete devices.
The latest report by the US NGO WebAim captures the situation: analyzing a million home pages in search of accessibility problems, the study certifies that 97.4 percent of pages have at least one WCAG 2.0 error (i.e., it did not comply with at least one of the guidelines for the accessibility of web content) and, more specifically, each page contained an average of 51.4 errors. Considering that an average home page consists of 887 elements, it means that users with disabilities are likely to encounter detectable errors on one element every 17 elements present.
WebAim also detected the most common accessibility errors found on the home pages being examined: low-contrast text, absence of alternative text, lack of form input labels, empty links, missing document language and empty buttons. More specifically, 86.4% of home pages have low contrast text (with an average of 31 instances per site), 26% of images have missing alternative text, more than a third of all the images analyzed present detectable accessibility problems and almost half of all the inputs of the modules are not labeled correctly.
As noted by experts of the association comparing the results of the last three annual monitoring, problems related to home page with low contrast text, missing input labels and empty buttons are generally increased, while the criticalities with home page with alternative text missing, empty links and language of the missing document are on the contrary and luckily diminished.
How to make the site accessible
Despite the growing focus on the issue – even supranational institutions are moving to promote accessibility, as in the case of the European Union and the European Act on Accessibility – reality tells us that in practice digital inclusiveness is the last thing (or at least among the latest) that marketing experts think of when they create a website, and the numbers found by the Webaim study confirm it.
In addition to the social aspect, because as said this negligence prevents many people from accessing the sites and using them correctly, there are also some business aspects to evaluate, because the errors create a real growth barrier for the site, which precludes the possibility of attracting potential customers.
For those who want to change their approach and make the site accessible there is good news: most of the basic interventions of accessibility are quite easy to implement, although the study of common problems and solutions may require time and effort.
The value of computer accessibility for marketing and business
This work to recognize and adopt accessibility to the Web can however produce positive effects for the site, as underlined in his article Atul Jindal, because this approach “improves customer experience, opens new doors to business, improves marketing results and increases revenue in more than one way”.
Computer accessibility therefore has a valuable value in modern marketing initiatives, because it allows in particular to extend the scope of the site market, to improve the user experience and also to benefit from SEO benefits.
In particular, a company that has a digitally inclusive web presence interacts with a larger volume of people it would otherwise have lost, And so these corrective interventions bring a whole new community of potential customers to interact with and to win over as customers to increase revenue. At the same time, it improves the positive perception of the brand, a key element to attract value-oriented consumers, reflecting the commitment to spreading the values of empathy, compassion and equal opportunities for all
It is easy to understand, then, that the work of optimising the accessibility of the site also allows to improve the user experience, a factor that is increasingly at the center of the digital presence because it refers directly to conversions and affects what the target audience wants, making it available in the simplest, more immediate and fluid way. A website without usability errors more easily achieves customer satisfaction and gives the potential customer a final push towards conversion, contributing precisely to improving returns.
And this also brings benefits to SEO, because search engines prefer to bring out in their SERP sites that are “safe, accessible and valuable to all types of users”.
The checklist of interventions to improve the accessibility of the site
To achieve maximum effect, IT accessibility should be considered a priority and therefore included in the digital and marketing strategy: if we want to correct some problems present on our pages, we can refer to this quick checklist of interventions that allow us to improve digital inclusiveness and demonstrate a different and more serious attention to users/ customers, as well as the possession of communicative and technological competence.
- Organization of titles and headings
We start from the structure to give to the page through the title and a hierarchical layout, which shapes the contents and makes them easier to read. Proper use of page titles and heading titles, which creates a hierarchical organization, is a fundamental part of Web accessibility and SEO, because it can make the site usable and understandable for users with certain cognitive disabilities, both for readers who have low attention span, increasing their satisfaction and the general UX.
Good page titles are especially important for orientation, to help people know where they are and to navigate between pages opened in the browser: The first thing screen readers say when the user switches to a different Web page is the title of the page. As already recommended by the SEO best practices on titles, then, it is also important for accessibility to verify that there is a title that adequately and briefly describes the content of the page and that this title is unique and that adequately distinguishes the page from the other web pages. In addition, the header hierarchy is also significant: ideally, the page starts with an “h1” – which is usually similar to the page title – and does not skip the levels, thus switching to the various h2, h3 and h4, although these are not absolute requirements but only recommended.
- Colour contrast
Some people cannot read the text if there is not enough contrast between the font and the background (such as using light grey text on a light background): the chromatic contrast implies the color adjustment of the web elements in the foreground (just like the characters) compared to the color of the background elements, to ensure that what has greater value stands out and is easily readable for people with visual disabilities and beyond.
The Bureau of Internet Accessibility has identified a contrast color report that ensures that our website is visible and readable for people with color-related visual disabilities.
Remaining always on the theme of “font”, should also be evaluated the efficiency of the effectively resizing text commands (available on most browsers): in order to read the content, Some people need to enlarge the font size or change other aspects of text display, such as the space between lines. However, if the pages are not designed correctly, they become in fact unusable when you change the size of the text, especially when it is modified by zooming in the text only or the text settings, because what happens is that columns and sections overlap, that the space between the lines disappears, that the lines of text become too long or that even the text itself goes away.
- Alt texts for images
The alternative text helps visitors understand what a web image represents even when they can’t view it for any reason; more precisely, the alt text makes the information available to blind people, but also for people who disable images or who, due to lack of sufficient network connection, cannot upload them properly as well as for search engine crawlers.
If we do not provide an alt text to the images, these resources are inaccessible, especially to people who use a screen reader device, which reads out the information on a page and use just the alternative text to describe the visual image.
Optimizing the images for the SEO and taking care of the drafting of descriptive and specific alt text allows, therefore, to offer to all visitors a content fully usable in all its parts, thus building a better user experience.
- Alternatives to multimedia content
Web pages no longer rely solely on the text and, as we know, there are more and more images, videos or podcasts that complement the information: however, if we insert these resources we must consider the possible limitations for some users.
In particular, information in podcasts or other audio files is not available for deaf people or for some people with hearing problems, while visual information in videos is not available for blind people or for some people with vision problems: to overcome the obstacle, however, we can offer the content in an alternative format such as captions and text transcripts, which can be read by screen reader and Braille display or enlarged and reformatted for visually impaired people.
- Management of modules and other labels
We said that the modules are one of the most critical elements for accessibility and that there are numerous errors on the sites in this regard, in particular for the lack of management of the labels that identify the forms – meaning with this term a single text box (eg Search), or a complex form with text fields, option buttons, check boxes, drop-down lists and buttons.
It is important that all fields of the module and controls have visible and textual labels, with which people can therefore interact using only keyboard, voice input and screen reading utilities; also, when implemented and marked correctly, the labels themselves become selectable, increasing the target area and simplifying the selection of small option buttons or checkboxes.
