How To Build An Accessible Website?

Level A Accessibility Requirements

Level A accessibility is for the websites when owners don’t have or don’t want to spend enough time to make them accessible for strictly everyone.

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The requirements consist of:

1. Non-text contents – Adding alt text to images, videos, and audio and adding names to the controls.
2. Add transcripts to audio-only and video-only content, mostly by linking the transcript near the content
3. Add captions to the videos
4. Write audio descriptions of videos
5. Make sections in the content using subheadings
6. Add sensory characteristics by adding more than sense, like sound and sight.
7. Don’t mention color references like guiding your audience to click on a particular colored button.
8. Don’t allow auto-play for audio.
9. Make navigations flexible, and don’t restrict it to the keyboard only.
10. Allow users to adjust the timing or pause the animated texts
11. Allow user controls for all the moving, blinking, or auto-updating content
12. Try to avoid contents that frequently flashes
13. Allow features so that users can bypass blocks, like skipping to the following content.
14. Write unique titles for all the webpages
15. Make the order of elements on your site logical
16. Make sure the links have anchor text and that it fits the context
17. Avoid automatic pop-ups like forms or link openings
18. Avoid auto-submit forms
19. Add an explanation in case the users come across some errors on the page.
20. Add preferred formats on input fields as a means of instruction.
21. Make sure the HTML structures and guidelines are proper. Avoid having duplicate attributes on the contents.
22. Ensure you are following HTML specifications for website scripts.

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Level AA Accessibility Requirements 

Level AA accessibility websites are accessible to more groups of people than Level A, and your website can be considered more proactive in terms of building and maintenance. With a Level AA website, your website is accessible to more users, but still not all yet.

Here’s what makes your website Level AA:

1. Using CSS for adding comprehensive borders. Also, enable keyboard focus visibility on all site elements
2. Add a language attribute to the contents or pages that are not featuring your default language
3. Ensure that your navigation menu can be accessed from the same location regardless of webpages
4. You can use identical alt text for elements with the same functions
5. Give the users a chance to correct the errors by creating a confirmation page

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Level AAA Accessibility Requirements

Level AAA is the ultimate level to achieve the highest accessibility for your website. On this level, you must check ADA requirements. This level of accessibility might not be possible for many companies, which is okay. And focusing on Level AA is more than enough.

1. Add alternative video versions with sign language and place them not far from the original video
2. To make your users understand the content easily, add extended audio descriptions. Keep this soundtrack closer to the original video
3. You can create full-text transcripts
4. Closed captions work better
5. Light text is a must if you use a dark background. And if you are using a light background, dark texts are wise.
6. If you have audio, make sure the background noises are negligible, or better, there is no noise at all.
7. Allow users to customize the background or the color of texts, or sizes of texts with comprehensive tools
8. Avoid redirecting your user automatically after a said time
9. Make sure your website saves the users’ data when or after re-authentication
10. Add a sitemap
11. Create relevant headings for your content
12. For high-quality content, avoid technical jargon or other hard-to-understand idioms or even avoid using metaphors in professional and technical content
13. Don’t use abbreviations without introducing them when they are first mentioned. For example, WCAG, whose entire form was mentioned earlier in this post?
14. Check the readability of the content before publishing content
15. Provide pronunciation guides

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Why make your website more accessible?

Website accessibility is a long process, but many websites still invest in this process. Why? Does it have long-term benefits? Let’s look at these 3 reasons businesses like to optimize their website for accessibility.

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Because it is moral

In some countries, it is required by the law for websites to add accessibility for everyone equally. It is important that, in any case, a specially-abled person shouldn’t feel the need to rely on someone else to understand the content and context of your website.

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And it is becoming easier to provide better accessibility through advanced web design, it is hardly a thing that hasn’t been done before and something you cannot consider.

Because it increases your customer base

Better accessibility directly translates to a larger customer base because if your website is not accessible by mobile users, you are losing out on that part of the audience. Similarly, if your website is only fast-loaded for countries with faster internet speed, you are only targeting a limited number of countries.

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Because it can be profitable for you’re financially

With an increased customer base comes increased sales. Because the more people are accessing your website, the more people are converting to sales. Accessible websites also require lower maintenance, and hence you are saving so much cost.

Conclusion

Considering doing all the web accessibility thing by yourself? You may try, but we recommend outsourcing this job to a professional marketing agency. At JDM Web Technologies, we have experience optimizing various websites for accessibility and have worked on all the 3 levels.

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