Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind
Your site may look great and be easy to use for you and me, but have you considered looking at the broader spectrum of users that might struggle to navigate your content?
In a nutshell, web accessibility is all about making sure your website is usable for everyone. Around 20% of the UK has some form of disability, so completely ignoring this practise could potentially be shutting the door to a large number of users.
Similar to most other types of testing, it’s unrealistic to try and achieve perfection when it comes to testing for accessibility. It should be considered in relation to your content and your audience. For example, it’s often a much higher priority for Government websites to spend as much time on accessibility as possible.
So, how can you test the accessibility of your website? Fortunately, there are a set of standards laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). With the information in these guidelines, You can have an idea of what to look for when testing the accessibility of your site, whether its screen reader friendly, possible to navigate using only a keyboard or even if the colours used don’t make it difficult for colour blind users to view.
There is a variety of software online to help test a website’s accessibility, but the one we use is accessibility insights for web. This chrome extension provides a report on your website’s accessibility and informs you of exactly where improvements can be made and provides you with an easy guide to performing your own test in as much detail as you choose.