*Collaborative Post
Do you know that digital accessibility means something more than just making your blog or website easy to use for people with visual or hearing impairments? It also requires understanding what users with visual, auditory, speech, cognitive, speech reading or other types of disabilities need from your content and designing your blog accordingly. You probably wonder why we need to take all these efforts to make our blog accessible and why not just focus on the design and user experience. Well, first of all, about 1 billion people worldwide have some sort of disability — whether it’s a visual impairment like macular degeneration that makes it hard to see things, a hearing loss such as being unable to hear high-frequency sounds, difficulty speaking or reading fluently (stuttering), difficulty remembering things (a memory disorder), and many others.
Use a good clear font style and size.
Fonts should be large enough and bold enough to be readable without straining. Selecting the right font type and size increases the accessibility of your content and simplifies reading for users with visual impairments. What’s more, you can use tools such as Google Fonts to get an idea of how your blog will look with different font styles.
Alt tag all images
Making your images accessible means providing alternative text (alt-text) for those who can’t see the image. This is especially important for pictures with a lot of text, charts, and graphs, as well as for images that are graphs, charts, and diagrams. They’re vital for blind and low-vision users who can’t see pictures. Ensure that the alt text you use is descriptive and concise and reflects the image as accurately as possible. Also, don’t forget to add a caption for your image, especially if you’re using it in a blog post. Captions are helpful for readers who want to know what the image is communicating but can’t see it.
Consider using live chat to assist with queries from readers.
If you’re getting a good number of queries from readers with disabilities, consider using live chat to help them out. Allowing readers to engage with real human beings instantly can make all the difference in how they perceive your blog. This is especially important if you are running a business alongside your blog or have links directing people to make purchases from your blog. Find out how to add live chat software for businesses to increase accessibility for users.
Label all links and buttons
Use descriptive and readable links and button labels for your readers who can’t see the links and buttons. Ensure you check that your CMS is compatible with an accessibility plugin such as WP-Accessibility, which allows you to modify your website’s content in an easily readable way for people with disabilities.
Use headings
When you are writing a blog post, you should use headings to structure your content. Headings should mark the start of your post’s new topic or sub-topic. The most commonly used headings are H1, H2, and H3, with H1 being the most crucial heading and H3 being the least important heading. It is essential to mark the start of a new topic or subtopic with a heading so that it’s easy to follow and understand the content.
Conclusion
As you can see, making your blog accessible doesn’t necessarily mean making it look dull. You can still create an attractive design, but you just need to be a little more careful about how you design it. Doing so will make it easier for everyone to understand your blog, regardless of whether or not they can see it clearly.