Accessibility, search engines, and good web design
Tracy Ponich
Web Strategy Consultant
21 January 2009
Recently I was out for dinner with new acquaintances. Conversation led to what I do – what my company does. Blue Glider is a company that creates and improves websites for businesses. After years of fighting for what’s right online in the corporate sector, I explained that I decided to take control. I started an online business that was different.
So what’s right? For Blue Glider, it’s simple: user friendliness, intuitiveness, convenience, and inclusive design. Inclusive design is sometimes called universal design, or just simply website accessibility.
How does web accessibility affect visitors who are not disabled?
This was a question asked at dinner. What does it mean for everyone else that comes to the website? This question is why I use accessibility and inclusive design in the same sentence. The answer: it’s better for everybody. Not just disabled visitors.
Why? For one thing, accessibility features align nicely with best practice usability (user friendliness). Here are a few examples:
- Visitors to a web page (including those using screen reading software) know at a glance what to expect from a body of content, a link, or a navigation label. Put simply, it makes finding things easier.
- Best fonts, font colours, and the ability to change font size not only help visitors with vision impairments, including ageing vision. It helps anyone with a small screen, such as a 13 inch notebook on a dimly lit airplane. It helps anyone frustrated with poor screen quality.
- It means any user not interested in Flash content has an option for HTML. There are still people out there who turn Flash off – not just the disabled. It doesn’t appeal to all. If there is no HTML option, those people likely leave the site.
Accessible and search engine friendly
Here’s another excellent reason to build accessible websites.
- Search engines love accessible websites for the crawlable HTML content. Navigation, headers and body content are all vital to search engine optimisation.
Adobe promises better search engine optimisation in Flash content, but I have not heard anything positive to date. Of course, again, one can get around the problem. Creating an alternate HTML version and heading search engine crawlers in that direction works. Great for search engines and for accessibility.
How many people are disabled anyway
Last month I saw an ad on Sydney public transport. Part of the NSW Government, Don’t Dis my Ability campaign, it stated a 20% disability rate in NSW, Australia. Disability refers to physical, cognitive and learning impairments. The ad stated: that’s 1.2 million people. That’s a lot of consumers in NSW alone. Too many for any business to ignore.
Getting at the heart of the matter, imagine leaving a wheelchair dependent individual in front of a building without ramp access. Building inclusive design into a site is simply the right and ethical thing to do. And there is a fantastic follow on effect. Search engines aside, it results in good will and customer loyalty.
Learn more about accessibility and website obligations
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