How To Create An Accessible Website
What is website accessibility? Learn why designing a website that is accessible to all users is important and how to make your website more inclusive.
Building an accessible website is no longer just an option for brands – it's a social and ethical responsibility. With over 1.3 billion people in the world living with disabilities, ensuring your online platforms are inclusive to all users has become a key priority.
As concepts of diversity and accessibility continue to shape our society, creating an accessible website aligns your brand with these integral values. It demonstrates you care about serving every individual who engages with your content or shops your products.
Here at Atlas Studio, we’re committed to helping you create better experiences for every consumer – and that means helping you learn what constitutes an accessible website, from meeting ADA compliance standards to optimizing for assistive technologies.
Our goal is to help brands create accessible, usable websites that work for everyone – no exceptions. By embracing inclusivity in your web design and content strategy, you future-proof your online presence while making a meaningful social impact.
What Is Website Accessibility?
Before we dive into the components of an accessible website, let's clearly define what website accessibility means – because this word can often take on a lot of definitions!
At its core, website accessibility refers to making sure your online content can be easily accessed and used by all people – regardless of any disability or impairment. This includes those who are blind, deaf, have limited mobility, or have cognitive disabilities.
When websites meet certain accessibility standards, they can work seamlessly with assistive technologies like screen readers, Braille displays, switch devices, eye-tracking tools, and more. Accessible sites also offer flexibility in how users navigate and interact with content.
For brands in 2024 looking to redesign their website, prioritizing accessibility should be at the top of your list. With inclusive web design, you demonstrate a commitment to serving a wider audience. You also future-proof your online platforms to align with legal compliance standards.
But it goes beyond what these design decisions offer your brand – building an accessible website translates into a better overall user experience for all visitors.
Think of the sheer number of people who rely on websites to schedule medical appointments, meet with telehealth providers, complete online transactions, and more. By making your site accessible, you ensure that these vital services are available to all.
What Constitutes Website Accessibility?
When auditing or redesigning your website, you need to understand the core components that make a website truly accessible and inclusive. This involves meeting certain web accessibility guidelines and standards.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 provide the main universal criteria for an accessible, usable website. Some key areas covered in WCAG 2.1 include:
Text alternatives for non-text content (like images, videos)
Customizable text formatting and sizes
Clear, straightforward language and formatting
Color contrast and text legibility
Keyboard navigability and control
Flashing content warnings
Focus visibility for interactive elements
Beyond the technical WCAG benchmarks, an accessible website also entails thoughtful content strategy and design choices. You want to ensure ease of use for those requiring assistive technologies like screen readers or switch devices.
Accessible Website Examples to Model
When designing or auditing your website for accessibility, it helps to study examples of sites that prioritize inclusivity. These models demonstrate best practices you can implement in your own online presence.
Here are 5 exceptional accessible website examples across different industries:
Mighty Networks: This community platform offers legible text, videos, and imagery that don’t disrupt site usability. It also uses ARIA tags and alt text.
1% for the Planet: A nonprofit network with high color contrast, ARIA tags, and thorough structural markup for screen readers.
BBC: Strong keyboard navigation and a “Skip to Content” option cater to diverse needs.
Patagonia: Outdoor gear retailer with well-coded forms, contrasting text, and detailed alt text.
Girls Who Code: Nonprofit uses minimal, relevant info without visual clutter for usability.
How To Build An Accessible Website
Creating an accessible, inclusive website requires a concerted effort across design, development, and content. Let’s walk through some of the key steps our team at Atlas Studio focuses on as we build accessible websites.
Step 1: Crafting an Accessibility Statement
The first step to building accessible websites actually begins before you even open a site design suite. Crafting an accessibility statement demonstrates your commitment to users with disabilities while detailing your current accessibility status. It’s all about transparency and intent.
Every website should feature an accessibility or disability statement easily found in the footer or on an “Accessibility” page.
Within your statement, start by noting compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 criteria.
Explain your efforts to make content readable and navigable for all. However, also transparently discloses any limitations, incompatible technologies, or reliance on third parties.
Provide contact information for users to request accommodations or report barriers encountered.
Highlight any accessibility features like closed captioning for video or audio transcriptions.
Here’s an example of a short accessibility statement:
“We are committed to ensuring that our website is accessible to everyone, regardless of ability. We strive to comply with WCAG 2.1 criteria and make our content readable and navigable for all. However, we understand that limitations or barriers may exist due to our use of certain technologies or reliance on third parties. If you encounter any difficulties accessing our website, please contact us so we can provide accommodations or address the issue accordingly. Additionally, we offer closed captioning for video content and audio transcriptions as accessibility features currently available on our site.”
This statement ensures that users with disabilities are aware of their rights and accommodations available to them on the website. It also addresses any potential limitations or barriers that may be present and assures users that the company is open to making necessary accessibility changes.
Step 2: Conduct a Website Accessibility Audit
After crafting an accessibility statement, the next critical step involves auditing your current website against WCAG 2.1 guidelines.
Thoroughly examine each page and component using automated checkers. Test site interactives with screen readers like VoiceOver and JAWS, and enable keyboard navigation and magnifiers to evaluate all your site’s interfaces.
Assess the following key areas:
Text Alternatives – Images, multimedia, and non-text elements need appropriate descriptive alt text.
Headings and Landmarks – Proper headings, tags, and ARIA landmarks provide structure and context.
Focus Order – Logical, consistent tab order for keyboard navigation.
Readability – Strong color contrast ratios and resizable text for those with low vision.
Labels and Instructions – Clear identifiable labels for forms, buttons, and site sections.
An accessibility audit creates an inventory of gaps needing remedy. It also establishes a helpful baseline to demonstrate improvements over time in updated accessibility statements.
For large, complex sites, consider an experienced web accessibility consultant – as these teams often have the expertise and tools to identify and resolve accessibility issues efficiently.
Step 3: Choose Accessible Colors and Contrast
When initially designing or reworking your website's style, color selection significantly impacts accessibility.
Ensure sufficient contrast between foreground and background colors by using online contrast checkers. A minimum 4.5:1 website color contrast ratio enables readability for those with low vision impairments. But aim for at least 7:1 ratios for body text.
Avoid conveying meaning solely through color. Also, provide textual cues and indicators for the colorblind. Enable users to customize color profiles to suit their needs. Build options to switch color themes, enable high contrast views, or swap palettes based on types of color blindness.
Remember that seemingly decorative color decisions can inadvertently create barriers for users with visual disabilities. Prioritize flexibility and customization so your designs work dependably for all.
Step 4: Optimize Images for Assistive Technologies
The visual content on your website poses potential barriers without mindfulness toward accessibility. When using images, graphics, icons, and multimedia, ensure assistive technologies can still interpret and describe elements to users with disabilities.
First, provide concise, descriptive alternative text for every image via the alt attribute. Avoid non-specific labels like “pic” or “image” which offer no context. Craft alt text that relays the purpose, content, and significance of visuals for those relying on screen readers.
For more complex images like charts or graphs, pair alt text with longer adjunct descriptions. Visually convey data points through textual tables as well.
When images are purely decorative and contain no contextual value, assign blank alt text attributes. This allows screen readers to skip non-essential elements to avoid confusion.
Ensuring flexibility in how images display and convey meaning is key for an inclusive, accessible website. Provide multifaceted text alternatives so assistive tech can always translate visuals for your audience.
Step 5: Structure Layouts for Screen Readers
An accessible website requires thoughtful structuring of page layouts for seamless screen reader interactions. Use proper HTML headings, landmarks, and semantic markup to organize sections.
Start by outlining main content areas with header, main, footer, and nav landmark roles. Break up areas further with leveled heading tags (H1 to H6) based on descending importance. List key interface elements like forms, buttons, and links using button roles so their nature and purpose is clear.
Where needed, communicate hidden semantic context to screen readers with ARIA labels. For example, note dynamic content updates with aria-live regions. Remember, users should be able to logically navigate your site’s pages and grasp the overall structure without visual cues.
Step 6: Provide Text Alternatives for Audio/Video
Don't marginalize users with hearing or visual disabilities by relying solely on multimedia. Whenever you embed audio or video into website content, include text-based equivalents.
Offer transcripts for pre-recorded audio, which screen readers can easily parse. For live video streams, supply real-time closed captions synced to dialogue.
YouTube's auto-captioning or platforms like Rev.com can assist with efficient transcription generation at scale. For audio-only podcast streams, provide an accompanying text article covering key topics discussed.
Text alternatives allow assistive technologies to translate multimedia context for those requiring accommodation. Going beyond alt text for images, these equivalents are vital for rich media inclusivity.
Step 7: Optimize Navigation and Interactivity
Ensure people navigating your website using only keyboards or assistive devices can efficiently access all content and features.
Use logical, consistent tab order and visible focus indicators for interactive elements. Allow skipping repetitive navigation links. Design simple linear page layouts avoiding complex multidirectional arrangements.
For drag-and-drop interactions, make elements operable through keyboards or touch interfaces too. Allow adjustable timing on interaction triggers to accommodate diverse motor impairments.
Test pages continually as you develop using only keyboards for control. All site navigation and actions should be seamlessly operable under these parameters.
Step 8: Mind Links, Labels and Instructions
Hyperlinks, forms, buttons, and prompts pose further potential troublespots if not coded accessibly.
Ensure links make sense out of context using descriptive text like “Read our new report on climate change” rather than just “Read this.” Identify destination pages or documents in link text as well.
Label all interactive site components clearly indicating their purpose and function, including buttons, dropdowns, and selection inputs in forms. Provide explanatory captions and text instructions wherever an interface action is not intuitive or clear.
With thoughtful labels, cues, and links text, you reinforce meaning for users of assistive technologies navigating pages without visual context. Leave no direction open to interpretation.
Step 9: Accommodate Diverse Needs
An accessible website accounts for a spectrum of disabilities, impairments, and user needs.
Build options to adjust text sizes, line heights, and color contrast to aid those with low vision. Allow text styling customization. For those affected by animation, flashing content, or motion sickness, provide ways to pause or disable features – so give warnings for any unexpected or jarring effects.
Support screen readers, Braille displays, switch access devices, speech recognition tools, and other assistive technologies. And don’t forget – accessibility overlaps with your mobile experience as well!
While full accessibility requires ongoing vigilance, continually expand options to accommodate more audiences. Aim for flexibility to suit diverse visitors’ needs.
Step 10: Perform Routine Accessibility Testing
Accessibility requires a diligent, continual assessment as you add new website features and content. Conduct quarterly scans using automated checkers to catch new gaps.
Perform manual keyboard navigation testing and screen reader reviews as well. Enable accessibility inspector tools on modern browsers highlighting issues. Invite users with disabilities to provide direct feedback through surveys and sessions.
Regular testing allows you to rapidly address emerging accessibility gaps – and it offers concrete data to communicate improvements in your evolving accessibility statement.
Treat accessibility as an ongoing initiative rather than a one-time project. Set reminders to revisit assessments and expand accommodations over time.
Accessibility FAQs
What are the legal implications if my site isn’t accessible?
Inadequate accessibility puts you at risk of legal action under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or other legislation protecting the rights of disabled individuals. Mitigate this by proactively optimizing site accessibility.
How much does it cost to redesign an accessible website?
Depending on site size and custom features, most accessibility website redesigns range from $3,000 to $25,000+. Budget for ongoing maintenance as well.
What’s the easiest way to boost my site’s accessibility?
Start with an accessibility audit using automated checkers to pinpoint gaps. Then tackle “quick win” fixes like adding alt text and ARIA tags. Finally, build more robust adaptations like color contrast adjustments for sustained impact.
Is there a certification standard for accessible websites?
Yes – conforming to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 criteria is the recognized standard to validate website accessibility. Most experts recommend Level AA certification minimum.
Want To Learn More About Accessible Web Design? Let Atlas Studio Be Your Guide.
Creating an accessible website takes forethought, effort, and diligence across design, development, and content creation. And when you create online experiences that offer equal access and usability for all users, you open your digital doors to a wider audience.
Want to learn more about making your website accessible? Contact our web design team at Atlas Studio! We specialize in inclusive website redesigns tailored for WCAG 2.1 AA compliance. We also provide ongoing optimization services. Reach out to us today to schedule your free website accessibility consultation – we’re here to help.
