Providing the best user experience (UX) should be the goal of every content creator, yet oftentimes the UX for people browsing web pages with disabilities is overlooked.

There are millions of people with physical and mental disabilities who are unable to experience everything the internet offers (R). Besides these people, many others are unable to access the web due to slow internet connections, small screens, non-standard devices, old browsers, and operating systems.

To improve accessibility for everyone, international organizations, such as the Worldwide Web Consortium have created the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to help web developers and content creators build websites that are accessible to as many people as possible.

These guidelines assess a site based on how perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (POUR) it is. They also rank each site on a AAA ranking system. In this system, a site that provides basic accessibility features is ranked at the A level. Sites that provide better accessibly are ranked at the AA level. Finally, the most accessible sites are given the AAA ranking (check out this summary of the WCAG to learn more).

Here is a breakdown of the POUR guidelines and some simple ways to make sure your site follows them:

Perceivable websites are easy to read, listen to, or otherwise experience, regardless of sensory abilities (smell not included, yet). To make sure your site meets these guidelines, you can:

• Add sound and text captions to videos, for people with hearing and visual impairments.

• Give users the option to increase contrast, and and make sure that your site is using appropriate colors for people with color-blindness.

• Give your links descriptive names, for example, link to page names, and try to avoid generic links, such as “Read More”.

Operable websites can be easily navigated and have an intuitive and useful user interface. Some common ways to improve operability include:

• Ensuring all menu items, links, and other actionable content is keyboard accessible for users who are unable to use a mouse.

• Making the keyboard focus indicator visible when a user navigates to a new element. This can be done by adding the focus psuedo-class to navigation items in your CSS.

Understandable websites have clear text descriptions of images, videos, links, and other data that users see, and also include:

• Concise yet descriptive alternative text (alt) and aria labels within the HTML code to allow text to speech software to work properly.

• Detailed error messages to users provided after inputting data, such as when filling out a form.

Robust websites work on a wide range of user devices and are compatible with assistive technologies, such as screen readers. To maximize robustness, web content should:

• Use HTML elements, such as buttons, links, navigation menu items, header tags, and input fields for their intended purpose. This ensures that devices like screen readers can interpret this text alternative text descriptions to sound or other output methods.

• Thoroughly test your code before publishing it, to make sure your HTML, CSS, and Javascript can be rendered across a broad range of different internet browsers and devices. Spin Group uses CanIuse.com and SauceLabs.com to check code compatibility on different browsers and devices.

By following these guidelines, hopefully, more people will POUR into your site. However, improving your site traffic and SEO aren’t the only benefits to making your site more accessible — you can also avoid breaking the law.

In Europe there are accessibility laws being enforced, to ensure that public sector websites meet the POUR guidelines. In the US, however, accessibility laws are less clear. There is currently no law that explicitly states that websites need to follow accessibility guidelines. However, this is complicated by the American Disability Act (ADA). The ADA was enacted to prevent discrimination based on disability in places that host the public, such as local businesses (R). Since websites are technically a part of a business, it can be argued that they should include these laws, and many companies have faced a lawsuit.

If you need help providing the best user experience to those with disabilities, while improving your SEO, and avoiding lawsuits — contact Spin Group.