The internet is a crucial part of daily life. Whether it’s accessing information, communicating, shopping, or selling—its capabilities and significance continue to grow. As a result, it’s important to make sure everyone, no matter their abilities, can use it effectively.
For digital marketers, creating high-quality content is essential, but if it isn’t accessible to everyone, it loses its value. This can harm user experience and brand trust, and accessibility should be a top priority when designing websites and creating content.
This is where web accessibility comes in, ensuring that everyone can access information, regardless of disabilities or temporary impairments. Read on to find out more…
What is web accessibility?
Web accessibility involves designing and developing websites and marketing assets so people with disabilities can use or interact with them effectively.
This includes people who are visually impaired, hearing impaired, or have motor or cognitive disabilities. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure everyone has equal access to information and website features.
Why web accessibility matters
In the 21st century, digital information should be accessible to all. Accessibility ensures everyone can use websites regardless of their abilities, disabilities, or temporary impairments.
By making websites accessible, businesses can reach a wider audience, including people who use tools like screen readers and screen magnifiers.
With the upcoming European Accessibility Act due to take effect in June 2025, web accessibility will start to become a legal requirement, with fines for companies not meeting the conditions.
Standards and guidelines: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The W3C set the standards that keep the web evolving. Accessibility is a key element in this growth, so they have established guidelines to promote web accessibility.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) aim to make web content more accessible. They are based on four principles—perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (POUR).
- WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1: These are different versions of the guidelines, with WCAG 2.1 including more criteria for new web technologies.
- Levels A, AA, and AAA: These levels show how much of the guidelines a website follows, with A being the minimum and AAA the highest.
In addition to this, the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) help ensure that the tools used to create web content are accessible, empowering authors to produce accessible content.
Key parts of web accessibility
To make accessible web experiences, several components need to align:
- Natural information: Text, images, and sounds should be perceivable by all users. For example, every image should have text descriptions (also known as alternative text).
- User interface and navigation: These should be operable, meaning all users can interact with and navigate the web content.
- Information and operation: Content must be clear so users can comprehend the information and know how to use the interface. This extends to aspects such as readability; the average reading age in the UK is 9 years old, so making content easy to understand is crucial for accessibility.
- Content robustness: Ensuring web content is robust enough to be used by various user agents, including assistive technologies. For example, using emojis in the middle of sentences might confuse someone using a screen reader, making your content harder to understand.
Creating an accessibility statement
An accessibility statement is your public declaration to ensuring your website is accessible. It provides information on the standards your website follows, the steps you’ve taken to achieve accessibility, and how users can report issues.
Creating an accessibility statement is also fairly straightforward, needing only a few steps to get started:
Understand accessibility standards and evaluate current performance
Perform an accessibility audit using automated tools, manual testing, and feedback from users with disabilities or impairments. You can use this to identify any barriers and areas for improvement.
Establish accessibility policies
Develop clear, comprehensive accessibility policies and display them prominently on your website. These policies should detail your commitment to web accessibility and the specific steps you will take to ensure your site is accessible.
Reinforce these policies internally to ensure consistent implementation. This approach is essential to avoid the perception that your web accessibility efforts are merely performative.
Ensure ongoing improvement
Outline how you will continuously audit and update your site’s accessibility based on user feedback. Regularly assess new content for accessibility issues as it’s created to prevent problems from accumulating.
Supply contact details for reporting issues
Provide clear contact information for users to report accessibility issues or request assistance, whether by email, phone or a dedicated contact form.
Moving forward
For all businesses with an online presence, understanding and implementing web accessibility is crucial. It ensures compliance with regulations like WCAG and Section 508 and enhances the user experience for a broader audience. By prioritising accessibility, businesses can create inclusive digital spaces that offer equal access to everyone, fostering a more inclusive internet. Digital marketing agencies must recognise this need, adapt, and create websites and content that prioritise accessibility.
As you can see, web accessibility is a fundamental part of web design and development. With the introduction of the European Accessibility Act on the horizon, its importance will only continue to grow.
If you need help getting started on the road to web accessibility, and avoiding possible fines in the near future, our team of experts are more than happy to help. Get in touch today to get started.