Websites are the primary source of information for the modern generation. But not all people are equally advantaged to have accessible information at the click of a button. Do you know that an estimated 1.3 billion people are suffering from significant disability globally?
Their needs are different from the common people’s due to different hindering factors like vision, hearing, learning, understanding, movement, or other cognitive issues. Dedicated web accessibility works perfectly in ensuring that people with disabilities have easy access to website information.
With an increased focus on brand building and revenue generation, modern businesses must understand website accessibility and associated audits. Several businesses are using these audits due to different reasons. Starting with a quick overview of both terms.
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Web Accessibility: An Overview
Businesses are in constant search of effective methods to use technology for improving their business efficiency. Web accessibility is one such tool that helps businesses gain the trust of people with disabilities. It ensures that people with different disabilities have easy access to your website.
The leading organizations standardizing the web accessibility guidelines include Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and National Disability Authority IT Accessibility Guidelines.
Web Accessibility Audit: An Overview
It checks the accessibility level of any website against the set standards systematically. It offers a report with the website’s overall conformance rating with WCAG and a prioritized list of issues. It further offers quick data on the conformance of the website with specific accessibility checkpoints.
Benefits of Web Accessibility Audit
Some popular reasons that businesses prefer to conduct an audit of their website accessibility include the following:
Writing high-quality code
Firstly, it is easy for your developers to create digitally accessible websites with high-quality codes. The popular accessibility tools offer a quick detection of possible errors inhibiting the accessibility of your professional website. Thus, the overall benefit of web accessibility for the writers is maintaining a clean code.
Using a clean code for your website has several benefits. It includes increased loading speed, reduced bugs, and increased user satisfaction. Hence, the use of digital accessibility for writing high-quality website code is one of the key investments for operating in competitive environments.
Increased website usability
Digital accessibility aims to ensure that your services, environments, and products can be used by people with disabilities. Thus, it increases the website’s usability for a specific section of the audience.
The best method to ensure web accessibility is to abide by the different recommendations from agencies like WCAG. Some of these include navigating the website using a keyboard and using alternative text for images and infographics.
A good catch here is that these recommendations increase the overall website usability for the entire audience. Hence, the website accessibility audit helps in maintaining the key objective of your website i.e., increasing website usability.
Improved SEO rankings
Digital marketers look for different methods to improve the SEO rankings of their website. With the actual process of SEO rankings being not revealed, digital marketers have to look for the hit-and-trial methods or best practices only. Creating highly accessible websites can work magic for your SEO rankings.
This happens as the dedicated website audits reveal the interrelation between SEO and accessibility goals. For example, a majority of the search engines are text-based only. This means that they cannot identify the audio or video content.
Hence, it becomes necessary to include the transcripts and captions which are necessary for making yourself accessible and improving SEO. Further, the WCAG standards recommend the use of texts for quick understanding of people with different disabilities like learning, vision, hearing, or others.
Improved PR initiatives
All responsible businesses understand that customers prefer buying through experiences over any other options. Hence, they are ready to buy from businesses which have a strong PR. So, what else to win the trust of your customers other than strengthening your existing PR initiatives with website accessibility?
Businesses taking a strong stand for people with disabilities create a positive image of their brand and operations. The common audience will definitely recommend your business to their friends, colleagues, or family members having different disabilities.
Many businesses prefer to publicize their web accessibility statements. This is simple but effective proof of your commitment to making accessible websites for people who have special needs.
Improved audience reach
Moving ahead, there is no difficulty in understanding that website accessibility audits help offer quick feedback to improve your audience reach. It is easy to attract an audience having special requirements along with the common audience by making your website highly accessible.
Companies that prefer to ignore this audience section lose significant business. Hence, creating accessible websites makes good sense. Many businesses question that it is not possible to make their website accessible to different people with different disabilities. The easiest solution, in this case, is to seek the help of the standard web accessibility guidelines.
Helps prevent lawsuits
Last but not least is the quick prevention of the different lawsuits against your organization by empowering web accessibility. Do you know that web accessibility is a civil right for people with disabilities according to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?
The legislation of ADA spread to web accessibility indirectly as it focuses on equal access to public services and places of public accommodation for people with disabilities. Hence, it is essential to protect your business from unwanted claims of discrimination and legal action. The letter of reasonable accessibility is released after the successful completion of the web accessibility audit.
Conclusion
Hence, it is easy to understand the key advantages of the website accessibility audit for your website. These include writing high-quality code, increased website usability, and improved SEO rankings. The other benefits of dedicated audits for web accessibility are improved PR initiatives, audience reach, and the prevention of lawsuits.
