







When it comes to running an e-commerce site or a brand reliant on its website for its business transactions, the main goal is to attract as many visitors as possible to your web pages, ensuring that it also has an accessible web design.
Website accessibility makes sure that your site is usable by everyone, including those with disabilities and impairments.
Want to learn more about why website accessibility is so important? In this blog, we will show you how you can check the accessibility of your site and how you can create a website design that is highly-accessible for everyone.
In simple terms, accessibility in the digital world means making your business website easily usable for everyone, when we say everyone it means everyone. Many people from this huge audience use certain types of assistive technologies, such as speech recognition devices, web screen readers, alternative keyboards, or Braille terminals in order to be able to browse online.
One option to check your website accessibility is to download and install a web browser plugin that will automatically show and check for issues.
Allowing users to customize the way they interact with web content can be done through the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) DevTools which can be installed as an extension in Google Chrome. It is designed to ultimately improve the usability of web pages for people with disabilities, and to make them more accessible through assistive technologies such as screen readers.
You have an abundance of different options when it comes to content management systems and frameworks.
We all know that open-source systems evolve so fast. Designers and developers around the world continuously ensure that they meet website accessibility and availability guidelines with a large number of themes and projects that support accessibility out of the box. From this aspect, WordPress is a well-prepared CMS but other platforms like Drupal or Joomla have some great accessibility features too.
One of the most important things you should not miss is the readability. It should be a major concern, especially when you are writing content for a larger audience. You should ensure that the text flow is optimal and easy to understand. The same rule of thumb applies to markups as well, so marking the essential content elements and making it understandable for users who cannot fully rely on visual cues is a key factor.
HTML 5, for example, gives developers every feature they need to optimize object labels.
You should never choose color layouts by assessing the overall “feel” of your website or brand when creating an accessible layout is your main goal. You should see the set accessibility guidelines and choose color layouts accordingly instead of relying solely on personal preference.
Since nearly 8% of the population has red-green color deficiency, relying only on these colors will prevent these users from visiting your site. Choosing colors can be a risky business. On the other hand, certain people with learning disabilities benefit highly from different color schemes if you use it to structure and organize your content.
Also an important thing for an accessible website is keyboard navigation. Users must be able to navigate your site without a mouse, to consider your website is very accessible. The thing here is that many assistive technologies depend on keyboard-only navigation.
Therefore, you should ensure that users are able to navigate and browse your site using only a keyboard. This includes accessing pages, clicking on links, etc. You can test this by visiting the front end of your website and by trying to navigate around the page using the Tab key only. Hitting the Tab key should let you jump to different areas on the page.
Website accessibility is a very important thing to consider. It will not just promote inclusivity but will also increase your website traffic and the likelihood of your visitors to return, better SEO, and positive public relations.
Want to make your website accessible to everyone? Definitely, we can help! iRepublic is a cheap and easy website builder in the Philippines that can help you create and implement a fully effective, mobile responsive e-commerce business website. We are an affordable web developer that offers a wide range of website templates that you can choose from. If you’re looking to build a fast, easy and affordable e-commerce website for your small business, contact us now and we can make your brand’s online vision happen!