Everyone’s talking about accessibility, but what does it mean?
Accessible web design means ensuring that your site is viewable and usable to as many people as possible. Although a large part of this is making sure that disabled users can access your content, that’s not the only benefit.
In this article we’ll discuss some of the various benefits of accessible web design and how they, in turn, can benefit you.
There are an estimated 8 million users with disabilities in the UK alone
There are a wide range of disabilities that can affect a user’s ability to browser your content. By making your website accessible to them, you are massively increasing your potential audience.
Technology favours accessible websites
If your site is accessible, it is more likely to work properly on different browsers and operating systems. More and more people are browsing the web on mobile devices like Blackberrys and iPhones and the chances are that if your site is built to meet accessibility standards, it will work on these devices.
Accessible design brings traffic to your site
Search engines loves accessible websites – simple things like separating the content and the style and including a site map make it easier for them to crawl your site and find your pages.
Accessible design facilitates international audiences
For a long time the English speaking world has dominated the internet, but times are changing. If you want international audiences to be able to view your website clearly and without errors, it needs to be accessible and compatible with their language versions of software.
Accessible design encourages users to return
Accessible websites are generally easy to navigate and read and load faster, which encourages users to come back. Statistics show that if a user doesn’t find what they’re looking for on a site within ten seconds, they simply try another one. If you’re not accessible, someone else will be!
Accessibility is for everyone
Hopefully the factors we’ve outlined here highlight the fact that accessibility benefits everyone, not just users with disabilities.
