Accessibility Standards | Mindspring Design | South Jersey Website Design & Graphic Design Blog

Mindspring Design Blog: Web and Graphics Tips for Small Businesses

9 Mistakes to Avoid When Designing an Accessible Website

January 26th, 2009

So you’ve spent lots of time and money designing your small business website, and you’ve just launched it for the public to see. But wait! Do you know you could be ignoring a large percentage of the population and thus reducing the market audience you are targeting?

You might take for granted that some users cannot use a mouse.

When designing your website, you should design web content in an accessible format (not as an afterthought), keeping in mind people who have:

Visual impairments (Blind, Color blind, Senior citizens)
Hearing impairments
Physically disabilities
Learning disabilities
English as a second language
Slower internet connections
Access to Internet content on multiple platforms (mobile phones, etc)

You will reap several business benefits by following web site accessibility standards:

Improve the searchability of your website.
Increase usability and help to improve web conversions.
Increase information access to more people using assistive technologies and adaptive technologies.
Accessibile web design is required by law in some places, so your business brand will benefit by complying with accessibility standards.

9 Accessibility Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Website:

All your links read: “Click Here.” This could be confusing to visitors using screen readers and other assistive technologies. Instead, use a descriptive link that gives useful clues about where you’ll take them once they click.
You use tables to layout your web pages. Instead, use tables for organizing ‘tabular data’ (for charts and such) to eliminate confusing and repetitive table tags. Opt for CSS to layout and style your web content.
Your pages use extremely small type (because “it looks cool”) that can’t be resized in the browser. People with sight disabilities may need larger text in their browser. If your design breaks or doesn’t allow that, they will have to leave your website.
Color is used as an integral design or navigation element. That would confuse those who are color blind (take the color blind test). And remember some monitors don’t display colors accurately.
You’ve got light grey text on a white background or dark grey type on a black background (because it’s “so Web 2.0″). This makes reading a difficult and painstaking process. You need to use a bit more contrast for users with challenged vision. You don’t have to completely sacrifice design for functionality, but do keep this in mind. And do allow users to make their own decisions about how they browse your page.
All description, title and alt tags have been left blank so people must guess what your page and images are all about. Make sure your web designer goes that extra step, labeling and describing the contents of your page. This may mean that you, the business owner, must provide content for the designer to input.
There are no captions on any video or audio recordings, and no transcripts are provided for the deaf. Physically challenged users might miss out on this quality web content. So don’t leave anyone out, and make sure to offer alternative versions of your audio/visual content.
There are no descriptive tags in web forms explaining how to fill them out. Close your eyes and imagine filling out an online form. Where do you start, what should you type, in what format? To ensure that you recieve high quality form submissions (or recieve submissions at all), try including descriptive form tags. You web designer should also insert any instructions (like “enter year with four digits: 2010″) before the form fields, not after.
You used an online validator, but didn’t do any web content accessibility testing on actual users with disabilities. An online validator is a good place to start. But it is not a good substitute for a person. Testing your page on a group of people who have disabilities will give you most invaluable feedback about your site.