Whether or not you have (or realize you have) disabled visitors to your web presence, chances are that web accessibility is more important to the performance of your site than you realize.
1. Everyone has a blind visitor to their site, and his name is Google.
The exact same strategies you can implement on your site to make it accessible to blind visitors almost always helps your organic search engine positioning. Insuring that images have relevant ALT attributes, descriptive TITLE tags, and using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for formatting rather than inline markup, all make your site far easier to use for disabled visitors, and also enhance your position with search results.
2. Accessible web sites have a larger audience
Making a web site accessible to a wide variety of devices usually also makes it accessible to a wide variety of browsers. Nothing is more frustrating than having to shut down your preferred web browser, and re-visit a site in another one so that it will operate properly. This can be so frustrating, in fact, that most visitors won’t do it – they’ll find a site that works in their preferred browser.
3. “Accessibility” is about more than disabled visitors.
Making a web site “accessible” also makes it available to devices other than traditional browsers. The concept of a “site visit” has changed. “Visits” could entail reading your content from an RSS reader, from a third party site that aggregates content, or from a cell phone or other mobile device. Mobile devices in particular are growing faster than any other browsing sector, and this should be on the mind of every web site developer with a forward-thinking strategic outlook.
4. Protection from lawsuits
The very last thought that many website owners have is about being sued for the way there website is produced. It’s certainly rare, but it has happened, and it was not just little “mom & pop” e-commerce sites (although they are the most popular target) that were the object of legal action. Target, Inc. is the largest company ever to settle one of these lawsuits for SIGNIFICANT cash damages.
At this point, you either agree that web accessibility is important, or you don’t. Even if you do, however, you are likely thinking that this kind of development is expensive and time consuming, and nothing could be further from the truth.
When a project is planned from the very beginning to be accessible (changes late in the process are always expensive), accessible development is often cheaper. Accessible websites are far, far easier to maintain (because they separate your content from the presentation), so costs over the course of ownership of the site are lower, too. With the added benefit of increased organic search engine visibility, it’s truly a win-win situation.
Matt Cave
Director of Application Development
MarketNet
