How to Make Your WordPress More Accessible | The Journey

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0:12 How to make your WordPress More Accessible
1:11 Creating an accessible site
1:35 Usability vs. accessibility
2:02 Different types of accessibility
3:18 Website elements for accessibility
5:38 Section 508 of ADA guidelines
6:33 Additional benefits

When you consider that WordPress powers as much as 37% of the net, it makes sense that getting to grips with accessibility for WordPress websites will help you open up a wide spectrum of the web to those who need it.

By creating an accessible site, you’ll:

-Provide more customers with a better user experience (which is crucial for building trust and loyalty).
-Better optimize your client’s site for SEO and consequently rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing.
-Avoid potential fines and lawsuits.

There is a lot that goes into creating an accessible site than just compliance. So, in light of that, we’re going to explore what WordPress accessibility actually is, why it’s important, and what you can do to boost the accessibility of the sites you develop.

What’s WordPress accessibility? Why’s it so important?

It’s predicted that 15% of the world’s population, — some 1 billion people — live with a disability of some sort. By making websites accessible, you’re having a positive impact on the lives of a massive number of people.

This may involve re-evaluating your design strategies to ensure your web page layouts are simple, menus are easy to navigate, and your client’s content is easily scannable.

It’s also worth noting that websites with custom CSS and/or sophisticated plugins and widgets often don’t function as well on older web browsers like Lynx and Opera. You’ll need to design sites with this in mind to ensure the majority of web visitors can access all the info they need from the website.

These days, most WordPress themes are responsive from the get-go – so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. But it’s always worth conducting an audit to ensure your or your client’s website works consistently across different device sizes, as every now and then small glitches arise. This is especially true if the template’s code has been modified, and plugins have been downloaded that aren’t written with accessibility in mind.

Usability vs. accessibility
It’s also worth noting that there are two aspects of usability that play an equally important role in how accessible a website is:

The accessibility of the website theme, i.e., How the site looks

The plugins and custom coding, i.e., What the site does

Section 508 of the accessibility guidelines
Regulations for website accessibility vary. However, US government websites have to adhere to Section 508 Accessibility Guidelines, which states that websites must:

-Offer built-in accessibility support like keyboard navigation
-Support screen readers and other assistive technologies
-Work with hearing aids and other assistive listening devices
-Ensure videos, images, or any other multimedia files include captions and audio descriptions

Which website elements need to be accessible?

Images and alt text - any website imagery (unless it’s purely decorative) should be given alt text that describes the image.

Acronyms - screen readers can struggle with these, which can (sometimes) result in incorrect interpretations. Communicate the meaning of these acronyms and any necessary subtext for the website visitor to understand the abbreviation properly.

Contact forms - If the contact forms on the site don’t have clearly labeled form fields, consider changing this.

Links - try to write more descriptive anchor texts to enable the user to navigate their way better.

Fonts - It’s usually best to opt for serif or sans serif fonts and avoid cursive fonts. You also want to steer clear of fonts that overly lean on the uppercase or alternating case and write in at least a 16px font size.

Although a bit of effort might be required to ensure everyone, no matter their disability, economic status, or the device they’re using, can enjoy a website — it’s worth it.

Don’t just leave it to chance that coding, design, and plugins are accessible. You’ll need to double-check to make sure everything’s compliant.

The Journey is what everyday entrepreneurs, like you, need to follow in the pursuit of online success. Our experienced GoDaddy Guides are here to take you through all the steps, both big and small, that you encounter every day.

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