How to make your website accessible

Did you know that 98% of the world’s top one million websites aren’t fully accessible? 

Accessibility is about making websites accessible to everyone, including users with impairments to their:

• vision – like severely sight impaired (blind), sight impaired (partially sighted) or colour blind people
• hearing – like people who are deaf or hard of hearing
• mobility – like those who find it difficult to use a mouse or keyboard
• thinking and understanding – like people with dyslexia, autism or learning difficulties

Some are more obvious than others, such as using unreadable fonts and colours. Some however would not cross your mind unless you or someone you know has suffered from a disability or you have already delved into web accessibility yourself.

Having good accessibility is important because you don’t want to block off any of your users from being unable to consume your content, or purchase your products. The more users who can access your site, the more potential business you could receive.

What is a Google Lighthouse score?

Google Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. It is an important tool because it can identify common problems that affect the quality of your websites. It works by giving your website a score out of 100 for:

• Performance – The speed in which your website is delivered to your users
• Accessibility – How accessible your website is to users
• Best Practices – How many standards were followed by the developers who made your website
• SEO – How good your content is, and how optimised it is

It then identifies the areas which need improvement and proposes solutions for them.

This has become a Google ranking factor as of mid-June 2021, meaning Google will change the ranking of your website depending on this score. 

Tips to make your website more accessible

• Allow your pages to respond to different screen sizes – for example, ensure someone visiting your website on a desktop computer with their font size bumped up to 400% gets the same layout as someone visiting your site on a small-screen device.
• About 1.5 million adults in the UK have ADHD. Reducing the amount of animation on your website will reduce the likelihood of distractions and disorientation.
• ​​Using websites like https://colourcontrast.cc/ will help determine whether the colours you are using contrast enough to be clear to users. 
• Ensure users can navigate your page through tabbing for those who are unable to use a mouse.
• Icon-only buttons must include an attribute to specify the button’s purpose to non-sighted users.

There are hundreds of ways we can help make your site more accessible. With over 20 years experience in the design agency, we can improve your Core Web Vitals to increase your leads. Get in touch with us and start your project today.

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References/Further Reading:

• https://web.dev/learn/design/accessibility/
• https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/helping-people-to-use-your-service/understanding-wcag 
• https://web.dev/measure/