Holidays are just around the corner. If you’re a website or business owner it is always best to have your website ready for the wave of potential customers and clients. Even before the holidays, people start their holiday shopping in order to avoid the chaos from the actual day. In this regard, the number of holiday shoppers keep increasing each year for the reason that goods, items and services during holiday seasons are simply more affordable and manageable.
Unfortunately, many websites and online businesses forget to consider specific types of users or customers – the people with disabilities. Shoppers with disabilities also contribute to the increasing number of holiday shoppers each year. While some of them are able to shop with ease, there are actually those who are unable to shop comfortably because of a websites’ lack of features and functions to assist users with disabilities. With the number of users with disabilities increasing each year, optimizing website accessibility would be a profitable step to take.
If you’re looking for ways to optimize your website accessibility for holiday shopping, here are a few things you should know.
Why You Should Optimize Your Website Accessibility for Holiday Shopping
There are a lot of reasons why you need to optimize your website accessibility before the holiday season. Website accessibility as encouraged by the WCAG ensures that all users and customers regardless of their disabilities are given equal opportunity. Here’s a few reasons why optimizing your website accessibility is important.
Inclusivity
As you optimize your website accessibility, you are building an inclusive environment that considers not only the general user but also users with disabilities. Among the users that are given opportunity include people with visual and hearing impairments, those with cognitive disabilities, mobility challenges, and other disabilities. As you consider users with disabilities in your website and holiday offers, you are fostering a sense of equal opportunity as well as inclusivity for all.
Expansion Of Customer Base
As mentioned earlier, the number of users with disabilities are constantly increasing each year. Unfortunately, many websites and businesses do no see this opportunity to grow their customer base. As you optimize website accessibility, not only will you increase your target audience and potential customers but you will also be raising awareness towards users with disabilities, thus fostering loyalty, credibility and even positive recommendations.
Compliance To the Law
There is a specific law revolving around the area of website accessibility, and that is WCAG compliance. Failure to adhere to such laws causes a lot of hefty fees and penalties, lawsuits, and other consequences. As you optimize your website, not only are you improving your presence towards users with disabilities but you are also keeping yourself away from breaking the law.
Improved Credibility
You also create a positive brand image as you optimize your website accessibility. As you prioritize accessibility for users with disabilities, you are demonstrating your commitment towards inclusivity, diversity and social responsibility. By providing equal opportunity for everyone, you are establishing a positive brand image towards your customers and users, and you are stretching the gap between your competitions.
Improved User Experience
Website accessibility also improves the experience of each of your users. As you optimize your website accessibility, you are giving emphasis to the overall experience of your customers and users. Optimized elements such as better navigation, clear and well-structured content, use of alt texts, use of assistive technologies, and other elements greatly improves user experience thus brining about satisfaction and increased potential sales for your business.
Better Rankings
As you optimize your website accessibility, you will also be improving your website rankings on search engines. As you have established your credibility by providing equal opportunities to users with disabilities, you will have better traffic and better visibility on search engines thus improving your rank among your competitions.
What You Can Do to Optimize Your Website Accessibility
Now that you understand the importance of optimizing your website accessibility for the holidays, let us check out a few simple steps you can take to do so.
Use of semantic HTML
Semantic HTML simply refers to the tags that are providing meaning to an HTML. Semantic HTML elements can include codes such as <header>, <footer>, <main>, <nav>, and so on. Use of semantic HTML allows information and content to be processes and shared across assistive technologies. This enables users with disabilities to understand and receive any content or information being relayed by your website.
Use Alt Texts for Images
Some images may seem unclear for visually impaired users. A good remedy to this is by using alt texts for your content. Provide descriptive alternative texts to your images in order for visually impaired users to understand what they are looking at.
For videos as well as audio contents, you can incorporate transcripts or captions for users to be able to understand your content – especially for those with hearing impairment.
Keyboard Accessibility
You can also make sure that your pages can be accessed through keyboard or via other assistive technologies. This is a great deal of help especially for users with mobility disabilities.
Clear And Consistent Navigation
Also, you need to make sure your content is clear and easy to navigate. Use intuitive navigation menus to assist users on what’s happening on your page. It also enables users to access your content without the need for technical skills and knowledge.
Using The Right Color Contrast
Use the right color contrast between your texts, backgrounds, and images. Visually impaired users usually have a hard time distinguishing important content due to the use of wrong color contrast. Make sure that you and your designers are making use of the right color contrast to clearly provide your content.
Testing With Assistive Technologies
Once all the coding work is done, test your website on assistive technologies. Does it run smoothly with assistive technology devices? Does it have any issues? Addressing such problems during testing can help improve your website’s overall accessibility.
Always Be Up-To-Date with The Guidelines
Last by certainly not the least is to keep yourself updated of the latest guidelines regarding web accessibility. A good way to do is to by constantly monitoring regulations and laws revolving around it. Also, it is important to train as well as educate your developers of the significance of updating your website accessibility elements and features.
Summary
In conclusion, optimizing your website accessibility for the holiday shopping is important to establish inclusivity, expand your customer base, avoid legal issues, establish your brand identity, and to improve user experience. Having understood its importance along with the tips on how to optimizing your website accessibility gives you an edge over your competitions and further improves your websites visibility on search rankings as well as its credibility.
