Is Your Website Friendly Enough for the Differently- Abled?
True. Most of the people are online and enjoy surfing the internet to while away time. But most website designers overlook the need to accommodate the interest of people who are differently-abled. According to a UN report, about 1 billion people across the world live with a disability. That’s a huge number indeed! Thus, it becomes imperative that you cater to the needs of people with special needs and incorporate functions in your website to attract them too. If you are still wondering what you can do to improve your website, you must seek help from a professional website development company and get your website cracking!
There are several ways to make sure that you create a disable friendly website. Here are a few, simple tips that you can implement.
1. Understand Your Audience
First and foremost, you need to understand your audience. It may not be practical to design for all disabilities. If you really desire to make your website the most accessible then you will have to get a first- hand experience about how a disabled person goes online. Once you have learnt about how assistive technology works, you can go ahead with designing a disability friendly website.
2. Use Alt Tags
The words that appear on an image when you hover the mouse over it are called as ‘alt tags’. A visually impaired person may use a screen reader to read out the text on the image out loud. That is the only way for such a person to know what the image is about. Make use of this opportunity and describe the image accurately. For instance, if the image is of pile of bricks, you may use alt text as ‘pile of bricks’.
3. Include Periods in Abbreviations
Certain words in HTML may require periods in between each letter. For instance, if you are referring to Central Intelligence Agency, it should be written as C.I.A instead of CIA. A screen reader ( a software program that reads a text on a website out loud) does not recognize an abbreviation without any periods and will read it out phonetically as ‘cia’.
4. Give a Description to Your Link
It will be beneficial if you describe a link embedded in your post rather than just asking the user to click on it. For example, it is better to write, ‘ To know more about the dental treatment, check out ‘ NAME OF THE CHANNEL’ instead of ‘ To learn more about the dental treatment, click here’. Ask your website development company to underline all your links and use a colour contrast to differentiate between a hypertext and regular text. This will help a colour-blind person to identify a link immediately.
5. Use Subtitles and Transcripts
In case your website has regular video updates, try and include subtitles for your videos. YouTube provides users with tools that allow them to include subtitles to their videos. A transcription of the video on your website will also be incredibly helpful to many users.
6. Practice Smart Colouring
This is very useful for a website and can go a long way in attracting all kind of audience. Be wary of using gaudy colours or using yellow, green and blue close to each other as it can be difficult for colour blind people. In most cases, stick to the tried and tested black text on white background as it is readable by most people.
7. Keep Your Write-up Simple
This practice will stand in good stead if you are trying to attract an elderly audience or people having learning disabilities. In case your website has a lot of content it is recommended that you use simple, straightforward language preferably in active voice and break the content into paragraphs or pointers. Obviously, it may not work with all the content that you upload on your website but you can use it on some of your pages.
8. Include a Guide
Include a section or a guide that will allow a user to know all the ways to access your website. You can also include some tips or tricks that users can implement on their PCs. For example, you can provide information on how to effectively make use of the settings or features on their browser or computer. Even if you are not able to prepare an exhaustive guide for your website, you can still provide most of your accessibility points. It can definitely be a useful resource for your website users.
Our website development company in Kolhapur can help you design and develop websites for people with special needs . Just give us a call on 0091 9156044824 to find out how we can help.
Contact us today to discuss your requirements.