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Posted on By Author ADA Support Categories Accessibility Statistics

Designing Accessible Websites: Inclusive Principles and Patterns for User-Friendly Experiences

Designing an accessible website is about so much more than making a website look good—it is about ensuring that everyone can access and use the website. By embracing inclusivity from the beginning of the website design process, all users will be able to enjoy a website experience tailored to their needs.

Accessible web design should be based on these key principles: including all users, making the website understandable, assuring it is navigable, providing consistent experiences and making the website robust.

Including All Users

An accessible website design should always be built with inclusivity in mind. Accessibility should begin during the planning and design stages to ensure that the website is accessible by all. A website should be designed with a “universal design” approach, creating an experience that works for all users, regardless of age, gender, culture, race, or ability level.

Making it Understandable

A website should be designed in a way that clearly communicates its content and navigational structure to all users. It needs to contain consistent elements, descriptive labels, and organized menus that are easy to access and understand. Additionally, features such as clear typography, simple visuals, and intuitive user interactions should be utilized to make the website understandable.

Assuring it is Navigable

The goal of accessible website design should always be to provide users with an easy-to-use interface. This includes providing obvious pathways for users to access content, resources and other tasks on the website. Additionally, navigation should utilize established patterns and conventions, such as navigation menus and search functions.

Providing Consistent Experiences

An accessible website should also be designed in a way that provides users with a consistent experience. This means that all users should be able to take advantage of the same functionalities on a website. Navigation, visuals, and interactions should remain consistent throughout the website, and should be designed in a way that communicates the site’s message to all users.

Making it Robust

Finally, an accessible website should be designed to be robust. This means that it should be optimized for different devices, screen sizes and browsers. Additionally, accessible websites should be designed using modern web technologies to ensure that they are up-to-date, reliable, and secure.

Overall, an accessible website begins with embracing inclusive principles, patterns, and user-friendly experiences from the start. Accessible website design is about so much more than making a website look good—it is about ensuring that all users feel welcome and can use the website. By implementing these key principles, an accessible website design can be created that works for all.

ADA Compliance: Why Your Small Business Needs To Invest in Web Accessibility
Posted on By Author ADA Support Categories Articles

ADA Compliance: Why Your Small Business Needs To Invest in Web Accessibility

In today’s world, an increasing number of small businesses are recognizing the importance of ADA compliance, or meeting the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act, when it comes to creating accessible and welcoming digital spaces for individuals of all abilities. ADA compliance, which began as a physical access and accommodation law in 1990, has grown immensely in recent years, to the point that now it applies to the creating and maintaining of digital spaces.

The key component of ADA compliance when it comes to web accessibility is creating an environment that’s usable by individuals regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities. This means making sure a website is keyboard accessible, readable by screen readers, and free of images, or other components, that could potentially cause text to run together or blend into the background.

Though it can seem daunting, a good place to start with ADA compliance is website auditing. There are numerous tools available to help small businesses, law firms, and lawyers audit their websites, ensuring they can identify any issues with accessibility and are able to fix them accordingly. Resources like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, and the Digital Accessibility Checker, or DAC, offer a number of suggestions that can help make webpages more usable and accessible, no matter the disability a user may have.

Investing in ADA compliance can bring with it a wealth of benefits, for businesses, law firms, and lawyers as well as for their prospective clients. Website accessibility can make a legal practice far more approachable and welcoming for those individuals living with a disability, making them more likely to reach out for legal help. Likewise, taking the steps to make sure websites and other digital spaces are accessible can help businesses and legal professionals both widen their reach and increase their credibility and trustworthiness.

In short, ADA compliance isn’t just a necessary step, but an beneficial one. Taking the time to invest in making web pages more accessible can not only make a business more trustworthy, but can also broaden their reach and make them a more welcoming option for clients of all abilities.

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