Many businesses have created their website for communication, marketing, and sales purposes. It’s an excellent way to expand their customer reach quickly through helpful and engaging content.
However, attaining a successful online presence doesn’t end in creating a business website that highlights your company profile, products, and services.
Your website has to impress users to sell and make a difference. Therefore, it has to be responsive, intuitive, fast, secure, and accessible. Testing your website for accessibility is also essential to enhance user experience.
But how does website accessibility impacts user experience? This topic question is the focus of this article. Read on below to learn more.
Create An Experience With Website Accessibility Components
Web accessibility is a quality of a website that allows people with disabilities to navigate seamlessly using different tools. Making a website accessible depends on different components, including web content, user agents, and authoring tools. These website accessibility components work together to promote a positive user experience.
Web content includes the texts, forms, images, videos, applications, scripts, and markup codes of a website. These elements must have the appropriate descriptions and coding to promote a positive user experience, especially for those with disabilities.
User agents refer to the software used to access the website. Examples include mobile and voice browsers, plug-ins, and assistive technologies. Meanwhile, websites must be tested with assistive technologies to evaluate user experience. For example, a testing company can check if your website is compatible with screen-readers that blind people use to access websites.
Authoring tools are services or software used to create web content. Examples include code editors, content management systems, database scripts, and document conversion tools. Significantly, it’s best to keep user experience in mind to improve accessibility when using these tools.
Alternatives Provide Access To People With Disabilities
Website accessibility standards and laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), help people with disabilities to access and browse websites using alternatives.
For instance, people with visual or hearing impairments must be able to access and navigate a website with the help of captions and text transcripts for audio content and audio descriptions for videos. Sign language interpretation is another example.
For data presentation, use text alternatives, such as illustrations, charts, and visual graphics. It’s also good to put labels on input and form controls. Moreover, adding helpful buttons and icons can help online users quickly navigate your website.
If your website offers these alternatives, online users can select the best option to access and engage with your website stress-free. This means good for your business because you’re able to cater to more people—including those with disabilities—promoting a good user experience.
On the other hand, don’t forget the basic navigation tools. Examples include easy-to-see search boxes and scroll bars. You can also include a site map to help improve your website’s accessibility and search engine optimisation (SEO). User experience is an important SEO factor to help boost your website’s ranking on search engines.
Improves User Experience In Limiting Situations
Website accessibility isn’t only intended for people with disabilities. Even online users without disabilities can benefit from using accessible websites, especially in limiting situations. For instance, people can view and access a website on a mobile device better if it has an easy-to-read typeface and contrasting colours.
In addition, text alternatives benefit online users with limited data bandwidth, allowing them to read the transcription instead of watching the video. Moreover, the audio transcription helps people access audio web content alternatively. Online users can read the text-based version of their favourite podcasts without using earphones or headphones.
Accessibility Testing Drives User Satisfaction
Making your website accessible can improve user experience and drive user satisfaction. The key to attaining these goals is through accessibility testing. Web designers conduct end-user accessibility testing using manual and automated approaches.
For instance, web designers contact people with disabilities to assess a website’s accessibility. They add some features or make some adjustments depending on the test results. Website accessibility testing is usually carried out with usability testing to provide the best user experience.
Usability testing evaluates how useful a website is in terms of efficiency, convenience, and user satisfaction. Most business website owners hire third-party testing companies to do this job. These companies test website accessibility in different ways, such as testing a website’s compatibility with a keyboard or using tools to assess a website’s common accessibility issues.
Conclusion
Website accessibility impacts user experience in so many ways. So, it’s important to design a business website with website accessibility in mind.
That way, you can help more people, especially those with disabilities, view and see your web pages using assistive technologies and similar tools. In return, your business will reap enormous benefits, such as more traffic and higher revenues.
