For those out there who run a physical store, you understand the importance of being reachable and how necessary it is for any enterprise that connects with the general populace. In the United States, it is against the law to not provide reasonable accommodations for anyone with disabilities who visits your place of business in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
It should not be assumed that only stores with significant daily foot traffic need to be accessible.
It is especially important for businesses that conduct their activities on the Internet to be accessible.
When considering it, individuals with inaccessibility issues might be more enticed to do their business online as any physical, visual, auditory, speech, or intellectual hindrances they have would likely be less of a hassle virtually. Or so you would think.
What Accessibility Really Means
The essential nature of accessibility is designing a setting where everyone, regardless of ability, feels welcome and appreciated.
Content on a website is legible and visuals are visible, and all media files can be watched.
Can you confidently assert that applies to your website?
Let me put it to you another way:
Right now, there are 53 million disabled adults living in the United States, of which more than half have regular online access. By the year 2050, it is projected that the global population of those aged 65 and above will reach 1.5 billion.
Disabilities caused by physical limitations can happen for a variety of reasons and can affect individuals of all ages. No matter what, eventually you should make sure your website is prepared with the proper adjustments for all people, even if the amount of disabled people who are visiting at the moment is equal to the overall average.
Meeting Accessibility Standards on Your Website
It is preferable that the internet provides more opportunities for those with disabilities. But when website creators don’t take user accessibility into consideration, the digital space may contain even more obstructions than the real world does.
If your company’s website has not yet been set up to abide by fundamental availability criteria, this is an ideal moment to do it.
Here are some reasons why:
- It will increase your audience reach as it becomes universally accessible.
- You’ll cut down on the chances (albeit rare, but still possible) of a lawsuit due to violating the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities or any other law established to protect disabled individuals.
- It’ll demonstrate your business’s dedication to social responsibility as you create a website that is truly about providing an equal opportunity to all users.
- Accessibility optimization often leads to cleaner interfaces, simpler navigation, and other elements that work well in improving the overall user experience. Hopefully, in turn, that’ll lead to an increase in brand reputation, and consequently, customer loyalty.
- Improved SEO often goes hand-in-hand with web accessibility. With an improved experience for all users, your site will have lower bounce rates, higher numbers of conversions, less negative feedback, and other positive responses – all of which matter to search engines when ranking a site.
The objective of having an accessible website is to give all visitors a positive experience, whether it was due to recent complaints or to uphold your obligations as a business owner. And that’s wonderful.
The good news is that the changes required to make your site more accessible aren’t too difficult, and many of them you may have already done as part of making it compatible with mobile devices.
1. Responsive Design
It is widely understood by developers and designers that websites must be able to be viewed on both desktops and mobile devices.
Even if you aren’t working with a professional designer, a lot of website designs are built with responsiveness in mind, which means they will adjust and be readable on mobile devices regardless.
It is likewise vital to emphasize that webpages should be constructed with a responsive design to enhance accessibility.
2. Interaction Methods
Some of the people accessing your website are not able to use a mouse, keyboard, or their fingertips (on a portable device) when engaging on your website.
If you want to reduce the inconvenience of customers needing to just use physical interactions with your site, you should incorporate text-to-speech functionalities.
3. Text Resizing
For some people who access your website, their disability might not be extreme to the point that they cannot see it at all; however, it is possible for them to have issues with viewing the text if it is too tiny.
Having large text on a web page can ruin the design, so a good option is to provide a feature that allows users to resize it how they see fit. This way, the text will be displayed exactly how they want it to appear on their screen.
Ensure your website is operational with various levels of browser zoom.
4. Alternative Text
It is critical for those individuals that are struggling to view images on your website to utilize the alt text and caption fields.
In this manner, viewing a picture will not be necessary for them to comprehend what kind of visual situation you have put together with the material.
Put in a lengthy explanation into either the alt text or caption boxes or go ahead and fill in both.
5. Transcripts
All forms of media that require streaming, such as videos, podcasts, infographics, and other interactive content, can be obstructive for website visitors.
For those who have a hearing impairment, are sightless, or face other difficulties in watching multimedia, creating captions and transcripts is vital.
6. Simplified Messaging
It’s usually not wise to fill your website with too much content. People have less attention now, so it is not good to make them read through more than 1,000 words in one page.
It is usually not beneficial to employ industry-certain terminology or slang phrases when crafting for the world-wide-web.
The simpler the language, the better. Posts on this website offer greater detail and give more value than other forms of writing.
7. Text Organization
Keep in mind to incorporate big and legible headings at the top of every webpage during the website simplification plan. This will enhance the ease of use of the page and allow for easier navigation.
Include obvious headings in the text of each page, separate sections, and create plenty of blank space so readers have an easy-to-read page.
Five Ways to Improve your Site’s Ranking (SEO)
1. Publish Relevant, Authoritative Content
There is nothing that can take the place of informative, reliable material when it comes to increasing your search engine rankings. Content of the highest quality is the most crucial component when it comes to SEO marketing. Generating material crafted specifically for your target audience will enhance website visits, thereby improving the reputation and pertinence of your website. Sharpen your web writing capabilities and demonstrate yourself as an expert in the subject you are writing about.
Keywords
For each web page on your website that contains authoritative content, pinpoint and focus on one particular keyword phrase. Think about how your reader might search for that specific page with search terms like:
- online masters in engineering management
- what is biomedical engineering?
- title IX education resources
- photographing northern lights
- how to apply for scholarships?
- when is the FAFSA deadline?
- what is the difference between engineering and engineering technology?
Multiple Keyword Phrases
It is nearly impossible for a webpage to obtain search engine ratings for a variety of keywords unless they are quite similar. It’s possible for one page to gain a high position in the search results for both “biomedical engineering jobs” and “biomedical engineering careers.” It is improbable that one page would be enough to rank both “student affairs” and “dean of students” or “gender discrimination” and “violence reporting procedures”.
If you are looking to be indexed for more than one key phrase on your website, it’s essential to create individual pages for each phrase that you wish to target.
Content
Content is the most important factor when it comes to how search engines rank websites. This includes the page URL, title, and headings. You should use your keyword phrase multiple times throughout the page: one or two at the beginning and end; and two to four more times spread throughout the rest of the article. Be authoritative. Connect to sources related to your topic and extra information both inside your organization’s overall website and external websites which are useful.
Make sure to emphasize your key words by incorporating bold, italics, heading tags (with an H1 included!), and other emphasis tags. Be careful not to exaggerate though! You still desire that your language and writing style flow naturally. Never sacrifice good writing for SEO. Pages should be written to meet the needs of users, not to satisfy the criteria of search engines. Investigate more on SEO tactics to discover potential material to post.
2. Update Your Content Regularly
It’s obvious that we have a strong enthusiasm for content. Search engines do, too. It is important to frequently change your content to demonstrate that your site is up-to-date and relevant. Make sure to stay current with your content. Assess your material periodically (e.g. every 6 months) and amend it if needed.
Blogging
Creating extra content, full of relevant terms and phrases, for your company’s news blog could help enhance your search engine rankings. Blog entries can be briefer reports about the exact subjects you are intending. Link your connected CMS pages and blog posts together when it can aid in providing the reader with a more complete understanding of the subject or further details.
3. Metadata
When constructing your website, make sure to place a section between the tags that contains information about the contents of your page (also known as metadata). The UMC web team will have filled in your CMS website’s data for you if it was created by them. Nevertheless, it is crucial for you to examine and revise metadata as your website evolves with time.
Title Metadata
The page titles that appear in the heading of a web browser window, as well as in the headlines of search engine results, are determined by title metadata. It is the most important metadata on your page.
A system has been designed by the web team that will generate a meta title on each webpage automatically for anyone with a CMS website, and the meta title is based on the page title. The significance of constructing page titles with precise keyword phrases is further enhanced.
Description Metadata
Description metadata is the written information that a web browser can use to display a result in your web search. Consider this to be analogous to the display window of your website – making a brief yet captivating description of what is included, in order to motivate people to explore further. An effective meta description will typically include two complete sentences. It is essential to provide search engines with a meta description even though they might not always pick it up.
Keyword Metadata
Metadata associated with keywords is rarely, if ever, taken into account when computing search engine rankings. It won’t cause any harm if you have already figured out your search words and phrases, so it would be advantageous to include them in your keyword account. You’ll want to include a variety of phrases. In general, try and limit it to 3-7 short phrases containing 1-4 words each. A great example would be “computer science degree.”
4. Have a link-worthy site
A webpage that is full of pertinent information, authoritative, impartial, and capable of aiding visitors in better understanding what catches their attention is likely to get links from other websites, thus improving its search engine optimization.
Enhance your reputation and believability by including pertinent links within the article. Rather than having links that say “click here”, try mentioning the name of the place you are linking to. Clicking the words “Click here” won’t have any positive effect on a website’s search engine rankings. However, using the phrase “Michigan Tech Enterprise Program” will increase both the ranking of the website being linked to and the ranking of the page it’s on. It is beneficial to incorporate meaningful links with appropriate key phrases, as it heightens search engine optimization, and also offers an advantage to readers that may be impaired, or who are using screen readers.
5. Use alt tags
When adding pictures or videos to your content, always include alternative text, or ‘alt tags’, to describe the media. Search engines are capable of finding your page due to its importance, particularly if somebody is utilizing a text-only browser or reader.
