6 accessible changes to your digital content
Written by Caitlin Roxburgh
Having accessible digital content should be a goal of any business with an online presence. However, a surprising 97% of the internet is not accessible to those with disabilities. Incorporating these quick wins into your digital content can boost your number of new users whilst allowing you to take a step back and evaluate how you can contribute positively online.
Using TitleCase to help page readers
Hashtags are a great place to start thinking about accessibility as they are an essential part of digital content. They allow your content to reach the right audience and they expand your potential audience to accounts that aren’t directly associated with you. But the lowercase nature of most hashtag formats can be a problem for page reading tools.
They are read as onelonglineofjibberish by these tools – meaning that these people who may be interested in what you have to say become frustrated as your perfectly crafted, personal password comes across as nonsense. By capitalising each word in your hashtag, you can help page readers and ensure that your hashtags are working to their full effect, reaching the full scope of #YourAudience.
Making images accessible
If we continue with our consideration of page readers…. the next most obvious point to make is with alt text on all the images you incorporate! You may recognise this as the incredibly small caption that comes under the image. This allows a page reader to recite a description of the image or infographic you worked so hard on…. instead of completely skipping over it. Ensure that everyone can experience your hard work by adding alt text to your images.
Video transcripts and captions
On the theme of visual content – you can improve the accessibility of your videography through adding captions or a transcript to your shared videos. This is available from WordPress version 5.6 onwards through the web video text tracks format (WebVTT) feature.
Something to look into is an exciting new invention from Google for Android users – live captioning. If this is viable for your business it could allow you to ensure your content is accessible without sacrificing time. Adding captions to your video also will increase your viewership numbers as video that you can watch without headphones grows in popularity, along with video content in general.
Keyboard navigation essentially means that instead of using a mouse you use your keyboard arrows to navigate website pages. This can mean that if something isn’t sign posted with proper headings and subheadings, it can be quite challenging to navigate the page. This is something that is incredibly easy to check yourself (no software required!).
Start by going on to your website’s home page and trying to get to every page, link, piece of text and button. All only using your keyboard. If you can reach every nook and cranny then you can pat yourself on the back! If not, it might be time for a rethink.
Colour contrast in visuals
It can be exciting to let your creative juices flow when it comes time to select your firm’s brand colours, but complete creative freedom can come at the cost of your website having a limited audience.
The W3C‘s accessibility guidelines outline a colour contrast of 3:1 for large text, and 4.5:1 for smaller text. This ensures that absolutely everyone can see your brilliant design work and services. If you find that this is an issue for your site, then it could be a great opportunity for some more creativity!
Accessible digital content: getting started
If all this information is sounding a tad overwhelming – don’t worry. We’ve compiled a list of free browser extensions, diagnostics and plug-ins that tell you where you can improve. If that still seems too daunting, then you can always start small and drop the jargon.
Making your online presence accessible through clever changes may be where people’s minds first jump to… but often the most savvy change is the simplest. By looking at your work through a layman’s perspective – you can encourage ever more numerous interactions. Here are some tools that can help you on your way towards sculpting your website’s accessibility:
- Wave Web Accessibility Tool
- Site Improve Accessibility Scanner (only works with Google Chrome)
- The Business disability Forum’s self-assessment PDF and Excel sheet
Walking the talk
Recently we’ve been reflecting on our own commitments and ensuring that our business practices line up with our actions. In the interest of this – and to show you how easy it is to reach a wider audience – we used the Site Improve browser extension to rate our very own website!
We scored a total of… 87%! Although we’re still not perfect, we are making steps to increase our site’s accessibility so we can not only reach the widest audience we can, but also ensure the internet is accessible for all.
