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Why Website Accessibility is Vital for Your SEO Efforts

By: Allie Huska

The ultimate goal of SEO is to build up a website’s engagement and online presence. While there are many routes to get there one often overlooked factor in building an SEO plan is focusing on the overall accessibility of your site and content.

Given that 15% of the world’s population experience some type of disability, you could be alienating up to 1.3 billion people from your content if there is no consideration for their specific needs. Accessibility and discoverability go hand in hand, and for as much effort that is put into positioning your site for rankability, the same steps should be taken to ensure that everyone, including people with disabilities, are able to find and utilize it.

So what does accessibility in SEO really mean, what does it look like and how do you ensure your site is accessible?

What Is Web Accessibility and Why Is It So Important?

Web accessibility refers to a number of best practices and web standards that make the internet and online tech easier to navigate for people living with disabilities. In short, accessible content is usable to all people, including those who use assistive technologies to access it.

Being mindful of web accessibility means ensuring that online spaces or content you manage are able to be perceived, observed, understood, and offer robust tech options to make the site more user friendly for anyone, regardless of how they access information.

There are a number of acts and guidelines that have been created to ensure technology is accessible, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which are a universal set of guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). While not every website is required to conform to their web content accessibility guidelines, site owners and SEO professionals should be aware of the potential to alienate audiences and customers from their services should they choose to avoid creating accessible sites or content.

How Accessibility Helps Better the User Experience

Take a moment and imagine that you’re trying to access your online bank. The elements overlap, the text colors make it almost impossible to read, and the links you need to click to take you to other pages don’t make sense. Without designing content that is accessible, this is the actual experience that many people who use alternative modes of reading and interacting with sites will experience.

Keeping the values of accessibility at the forefront of any content or site page allows people who may previously have been unable to access your content to do so. As our world becomes increasingly digital, so too does it become even more important that people have equal access to online navigation, easy online experiences, and the ability to find the information and services they need to navigate their day to day. In her article 5 Most Annoying Website Features I Face as a Blind Person Every Single Day, Holly Tuke points out that “accessibility is the difference between being able to use a website and clicking off of it.”

People with disabilities may navigate tech and web content in a number of ways such as:

  • People who are blind or visually impaired may utilize screen readers.
  • People living with motor disabilities may use different assistive devices to navigate screens, mouses, and keyboards such as voice recognition technology. 
  • People who are deaf may rely on captioning and visual cues instead of sound.

By keeping these varied modes of accessing content in mind, site owners and SEO professionals can begin to anticipate what may be difficult to access as a person living with a disability. Accessible content ensures that your content creation doesn’t go to waste, and is able to be perceived in a number of different ways that keep in mind any potential roadblocks that those with disabilities may experience.

Having your content accessible allows for an increased audience and can drive loyalty and trust from those that will appreciate the extra work put in to create an easy and accessible experience for them.

 

There Are Legal Implications to Not Having an Accessible Website

Accessibility goes beyond the desire to create a better and more equitable user experience—depending on where you live and the kind of services and content you’re offering, there could be potential legal consequences for not having an accessible website.

In the EU, the European Accessibility Act covers tech services that are accessible to the general public and requires they be compatible with assistive technologies.

In the U.S. the ADA offers web guidance and best practices, and requires state and local government sites, as well as businesses that are open to the public to conform to these guidelines.

Nike and Dominos have both encountered lawsuits based on the inaccessibility of their websites, ranging from denial of keyboard access, incompatibility with screen readers, empty or broken links, and missing alt text to name a few of the problems encountered by people trying to access their sites and services.

 

What Does Accessibility Really Mean? Remember the POUR Principles

When working to make content or a site more accessible, it’s important to keep in mind the POUR principles. Is your content: perceivable, operable, understable, and robust?

Perceivable

A site’s perceivability refers to how easily someone is able to access the information it’s providing. People with disabilities may perceive sites and pages differently, whether through sound by using screen readers, touch by using touch screens or braille compatible keyboards, or visually through the use of closed captioning on videos, to name a few.

Operable

Operable means that a person is able to utilize any interactive features on your site, page, or in your content, through any assistive technology that they may rely on. Can drop down buttons be accessed by people who utilize your content through keyboard only methods? Are timed pop ups going to be an annoyance to someone who takes longer to move through your content?

An operable site or piece of content should feature buttons, links, videos, or any other interactive feature in ways that are easy to use regardless of the tech used to access it.

Understandable

In addition to being easily perceived and operated, your content should be understandable. This means providing information in the clearest and most effective way possible. To do this, site owners and content creators should focus on consistent and appropriate language use and predictable page navigation.

Robust

Robust content and sites are able to be accessed across different platforms, browsers, and assistive technologies. A robust page is one that is able to keep up with the evolution of technology and the many ways we may choose to access it.

What Does Accessibility Have to Do With SEO?

While accessibility may feel like it’s more important to web devs and site designers, SEO professionals have a huge role to play in making the web a more accessible place.

In 2020, for example, Search Engine Journal reported that ultimately that 98% of homepages had detectable WCAG failures, while 97% of the deeper content pages also failed the accessibility testing. The biggest factors causing the failures for both of these were low contrast text, missing alt text, and empty links, all of which harmed user experience not just for users with disabilities, but for users overall.

What Does Accessibility Have to Do With SEO?

 

While accessibility may feel like it’s more important to web devs and site designers, SEO professionals have a huge role to play in making the web a more accessible place.

In 2020, for example, Search Engine Journal reported that ultimately that 98% of homepages had detectable WCAG failures, while 97% of the deeper content pages also failed the accessibility testing. The biggest factors causing the failures for both of these were low contrast text, missing alt text, and empty links, all of which harmed user experience not just for users with disabilities, but for users overall.

Ways SEOs Can Make a Positive Impact on Site Accessibility

SEO professionals can and should contribute to the overall accessibility of the web through the following methods:

Ways to Gain Links Manually

The best practices for manual link building are constantly changing. As the future of SEO evolves, so too do the link building strategies we use.

Despite this change and Google’s constant adjusting of the SEO algorithm, some tried and true methods of manual link building remain. These are some of the best ways to secure a backlink manually for your website.

Descriptive Page Titles

Descriptive, clear, and easily understood page titles make things easier for people navigating the web with assistive technology. A descriptive page title:

  • Allows people to easily know where they are in your site, and in comparison to other tabs they may have open.
  • Cuts down on time wasted. A descriptive title allows a user to immediately know if they’ll be able to find the information or services they’re looking for on the page they’re visiting.

Supports assistive technology such as screen readers, and also those with cognitive disabilities who can benefit from the increased clarity.

ALT-Text on Photos

Screen readers read everything on a page, including the ALT-text on photos. If you don’t provide ALT-text for your images, screen readers will simply read it as “image” or “photo,” meaning the image itself will provide no context or contribution to the article itself.

Because of this, any imagery used in an SEO piece should provide clear, descriptive alt-text that allows those who are visually impaired or blind to understand and benefit from the added context of the image.

Descriptive Page Titles

Descriptive, clear, and easily understood page titles make things easier for people navigating the web with assistive technology. A descriptive page title:

  • Allows people to easily know where they are in your site, and in comparison to other tabs they may have open.
  • Cuts down on time wasted. A descriptive title allows a user to immediately know if they’ll be able to find the information or services they’re looking for on the page they’re visiting.

Supports assistive technology such as screen readers, and also those with cognitive disabilities who can benefit from the increased clarity.

ALT-Text on Photos

Screen readers read everything on a page, including the ALT-text on photos. If you don’t provide ALT-text for your images, screen readers will simply read it as “image” or “photo,” meaning the image itself will provide no context or contribution to the article itself.

Because of this, any imagery used in an SEO piece should provide clear, descriptive alt-text that allows those who are visually impaired or blind to understand and benefit from the added context of the image.

Using Appropriate Headings

For those using assistive technology, page navigation is often done by utilizing the various elements on the page such as hyperlinks and headings. By ensuring the use of an appropriate and logical heading structure, people with disabilities are able to easily navigate a page or article to find the information they need.

 

Accurate Anchor Text and Concise Hyperlinking Within Articles

Many best practices that contribute to successful link building are also the same principles used to ensure that a piece of content is accessible.

Anchor text is a huge area that SEO professionals have control over. In order to be as accessible as possible, anchor text should strive to be as clear, concise, and descriptive as it can be. Beyond just being good SEO practices, clear and descriptive anchor text allows people with disabilities to make quick decisions about whether or not a link leads to information they need, cutting down on frustrating or unnecessary web navigation.

The hyperlink itself should also be short, clear, and as descriptive as possible, with any unnecessary tagging or characters removed. Many screen readers will fully read out a URL when it encounters it, making it beneficial to clean up any linking you provide in a piece of content.

Readability

A great practice for all content creators to adopt, including SEO professionals, is enhancing the readability of their pieces. This means avoiding the need to overcomplicate the language on your site. 

Instead, stick to clear, consistent, and easily understandable language that provides clarity on the information or services you’re providing. You can use tools like Hemingway to simplify your writing so everyone can understand the information you’re trying to convey.

Be Sure to Regularly Test Your Site’s Accessibility

The best way to learn about your content or site’s accessibility is to test, and test again! A helpful practice is to have real people, and in particular, people with disabilities, test your site and provide feedback. You can also use assistive technology yourself (such as screen readers or voice command tech) to investigate how they work with your content or site.

In addition to testing from real humans, there are a number of great tools that can help to identify any potential roadblocks that people with disabilities may encounter while accessing your site or content.

Google Lighthouse

Google lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool used to audit and improve the quality of web pages. It can be used to investigate performance, SEO, accessibility, and more. Known for its ease of use, all it requires is a Google Chrome browser and a URL. Google Lighthouse will provide a score in each different area you’re investigating, and highlight failures on the page that can then be fixed.

WAVE

Web Accessibility Evaluation (WAVE) is a suite of evaluation tools that helps web writers make their content more accessible to people with disabilities. They provide a browser extension, API and engine testing, and can even facilitate human testing.

axe DevTools

axe DevTools is a free to use accessibility checker for those working in Chrome. axe DevTools prides itself on offering “no false positives,” meaning they’ll only report on issues that are a known problem with 100% certainty. Their extension can easily provide automated accessibility testing, with both a free and premium version available to users.

LERA

LERA is another chrome extension that provides fast and detailed accessibility reports, and offers potential solutions and fixes for any problems it encounters. LERA is completely free and will both run audits and provide an excel breakdown for no cost.

accessiBe

The use of AI is expanding, and in addition to its use in content creation, it can also be used to help perform accessibility testing. The accesiBe widget utilizes AI to perform fast, thorough, and solutions focused audits on your site, and allows you to make fixes through the interface to ensure accessibility compliance.

Conclusion

Digital growth shows no sign of slowing down, making it more important than ever to recognize that equitable digital access is a human right. As SEO professionals our goal remains to foster growth, build audiences, and drive traffic for our clients.  A significant step to achieving those goals is to create content and build links that are easily accessible to all, regardless of whether or not they experience living with a disability.

Digital accessibility at the forefront of site design and content planning is important and we should strive to make content clear, informative, and easy to access with assistive technologies. Simply, a website built in a way that is easy to navigate results in a better digital space for all!

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