An Accessibility-First Approach to Visual Web Design
As companies and businesses move towards digital spaces, the importance of accessibility in web design cannot be overstated. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. These individuals may have difficulty navigating websites that aren’t accessible. That’s why businesses should prioritize accessibility in web design, which means taking an accessibility-first approach to visual web design. In this blog post, we’ll discuss what this approach entails and why it matters.
Understanding Accessibility-First Approach
Accessibility-first web design is the concept that websites should be designed from the beginning with accessibility in mind. This means considering all users, including those with disabilities, before making design decisions. It means using practices that ensure that every user can access and interact with the information on the site. This approach means creating an accessible website that is easy to use, understand and navigate.
Benefits of Accessibility-First Approach
By putting accessibility first when designing your website, you are maximally optimizing your website to reach all users regardless of their disabilities. This ensures that your content is available and accessible to everyone. This approach also helps in improving site ranking and can increase the number of potential users by more than 15%.
Best Practices for Accessibility-First Approach
The first and most common web accessibility practice is color contrast, which is ensuring that text color and background color are completely different from each other. This is important because it ensures that the text on your website is visible and easy to read. The second practice is to make all content of the website accessible to screen readers or other forms of text-to-speech aids. Lastly, businesses can incorporate website keyboard navigation into their design to enable users to access the site without the need for a mouse.
Accessibility and SEO
An accessibility-first approach also improves search engine optimization (SEO) since search engines like Google place a high emphasis on website accessibility. An accessible website means that all users can access and interact with the website, which is an important factor in determining a website's ranking.
Conclusion
Web design isn’t just about making your site look good. By taking an Accessibility-First approach to visual design, a business can create a website that is equally accessible to everyone regardless of their disabilities. And by prioritizing accessibility-first, it can improve its site ranking and ultimately increase its potential clients. So, if you’re looking for website and SEO services in Orlando, consider REK Marketing & Design for all your web design needs. Contact us today for more information.