The Step By Step Guide To Improve The Accessibility Of Your WordPress Website

How easily visitors can access your site are the measurements of website accessibility. Being a WordPress website owner, website handiness needs smart work done. Whether it’s convenient to design or clear content, this guide will solidly lead to improved accessibility of your WordPress website.

In this article, we will discuss a step-by-step guide to improve accessibility. Likewise, we will also disclose the role of WordPress Website development and design for the same.

5 effective Step to improve WP website accessibility-

Step 1.  Design layout

Impressive website design is directly proportional to how long the visitor will take to understand it. In website design, many things to perform such as colour, menu navigation, icon, text and the most important, the way they all work.

For example, use “click here to learn about our services” rather than “click here”.

Just imagine your menu only shows when the visitor hovers under it, but they can’t scroll it with a keyboard. In that case, ensure he/she can scroll it with both mouse or keyboard, as only your site is accessible.

1. Use descriptive links- What if in the case of a physically limited user, screen reader & voice command technology, not able to read your link. Then you think your site will present in ranked results? Well, we don’t think so.
2. Button and menu items- Whether drop-down menus or menu items or buttons, make sure they are accessible. To make them accessible, do this:
3. Colour consideration- Apart from that, who will not link the colour contrast, you will surely don’t want to miss the 4.5% of the total population (colour blinds). Taking care of the ratio and contrast of your website design is studious.  
4. Font Colour Guidelines-
   • Use back & white (notable colour contrast)
   • Back text with white background goes for vision limitations too. 
   • 4.5:1 should be the minimum contrast where 7:1 is the ideal one.

Step 2. Organization

How your site text, menu, image and other elements of page layout arrange on-page and how those pages are arranged on your site. And that organisation should be navigational and clear.

To enhance the organisation's accessibility of your WordPress website, make sure you have performed the below ones.

1. Add sitemap & table of content- Especially with large sites, you can’t fit in all pages on the menu, so prepare a sitemap table of content for easy navigation or other navigational options.
2. Section divisions- Use clear values of CSS or HTML, while dividing sections, for clear screen readers interpret. However, if you are not comfortable with the code behind the site, use blocks to divide sections.

Step 3. Text

Now when you have done navigation and organised, it's time for what and how they read.

1. Use content headers- According to NN/g, only 16% of website visitors read word-to-word where others scan it. If your content is not noticeable enough, use attentive headings. For that, write headings cleverly and make sure you have added one idea per paragraph. Besides, use bullets and bolden keywords, but not the same ones.
2. Font type & size- Arrange your text for both small and large screens as both the users viewing the same. After all, it's not a neglecting point that in 2021 over 50% of users are coming from small screens.

According to font size guidelines, it should be at least 16 px in Proxima Nova in case of heavy pages. For secondary text size, it should be 2 sizes smaller than paragraph text.

3. Underline links- To make it aesthetically pleasing, most often we don’t use underlined links, however, they are more visual and easy to read. For another option, you can add some extent such as bold text, so it can be easily readable.

Step 4. Picture and media

Picture and video content are good for both SEO and appealing parts, but don’t let this be an obstacle for your website accessibility. There are some media-related tactics you can use to boost your WP website accessibility.

1. Image alt text- It is not only crucial for SEO, but it also helps accessibility. Each time a user uses a screen reader, only image alt text can help them identify the picture content. For that, instead of filling that vital space with keywords, use words that describe pictures too.
2. Text alternatives to audio & visual content- For sites with visual content, please add text content as well. It will not only help you with SEO matters but make them readable for screen readers. To do this, you can add podcasts & audiobooks.

Step 5.  Test

Take an accessibility test as the ultimate step of the process. But the question is the website you are using for so long and are well aware of, can you check for the accessibility, isn’t it accessible for you?

Here, how you can do it:

• Use accessibility tools
• No stylesheet check
• No mouse check
• No image Check

Read Also: Benefits of a WordPress Support Retainer For Business Owners 

Final Thoughts!

The concept of website accessibility not only for physically challenged but people accessing by phones on low internet speeds, uneducated so on. It is a time taking a skilled process that needs a smart approach such as a WordPress Development Company with expertise in hand.