As a proud local business in Wagga, we understand the importance of connecting with our community. One of the most effective ways to do this is by ensuring your website is accessible to everyone. Accessibility is an important topic these days, as it should be. It has become a focal point for many businesses to make sure their website usability is inclusive to every visitor.
This month I emailed out all of my clients letting them know about a big push in the tourism sector for accessibility. This isn’t just online but also physical accessibility to businesses. I see it all the time recently I had a customer in Canberra who has a denture clinic telling me about how important parking is to her and her customers and how she’ll loose business if her clinic isn’t easy to access. It’s the same with your online business.
However, some businesses are falling behind, not knowing the benefits of having an accessible website. It may be that they feel overwhelmed by the potential changes they need to make, or they simply don’t know the importance of it for reaching as wide an audience as possible.
Let’s take a look at some of the surprising benefits that having an accessible website can bring.
- You reach a wider audience – Get Leads takes effective websites that reach more clients very serious. By taking the steps to make your website more accessible, you’re creating an opportunity for more people to use it, which will naturally grow your audience.
- It can help to increase traffic – Get Leads is all about growing your website traffic. An added benefit to simply making changes to make your website more accessible is that it helps with SEO. By taking extra care with titles, headings, and labelling images, your website has a better chance of ranking higher in search engines.
- You increase trust – In Wagga and regional towns new customers must have trust. Making your website more accessible seriously ups the trust factor. You’re raising awareness of the importance of accessibility, showing that you’re making the effort, and communicating that you care about the needs of your visitors.
- You can avoid legal complications – Even regional business don’t want to exclude people from their services even if it’s not on purpose. Some countries actually require by law that your website meets certain accessibility standards. Being proactive about ensuring your website is usable for people with disabilities helps to protect you from legal complications.
In Australia, website accessibility is governed by several laws and standards designed to ensure that digital content is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. The primary legislation includes the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA), which mandates that businesses and organizations must provide equal access to goods, services, and facilities, including online content. Additionally, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) serve as a benchmark for web accessibility, outlining best practices for making websites usable by people with various disabilities. Failure to comply with these legal requirements can result in complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), potential legal actions, and reputational damage. Therefore, it’s crucial for businesses to prioritize accessibility in their web design to both adhere to the law and foster an inclusive online environment. - Your existing customers will benefit – Not only will new users benefits from your website being more accessible but your existing customers also will. For example, if you have transcriptions or closed captions for your videos, even users who are not hard of hearing might enjoy consuming the content with the sound off. They could be busy, in a loud room, or simply prefer reading.
When it comes to DIY builders making your website is still not a given. It won’t do it for you, there’s lots of extra work in this beyond what you see and 9/10 SquareSpace & Wix websites won’t measure up. To be fair this is also the case for WordPress and Drupal based sites but the big difference is the person using the builders and their experience and capability to make the site accessible. This is one of the reasons why we offer a website re-platform service to move sites from the DIY builders to a builder that gives you more control.
What does an accessible website look like
- Designer has considered colour contrast between colours
- The use of heading hierarchy’s
- The use of tagged alt images and whats called aria labels on links
- Tab indexing
- Readable or audible plugin for text
- The use of plugins that enhance colour difficulties
There’s a great article you can read on the hubspot that goes into the topic more.
Contact me for a chat about accessibility, doing an audit and upgrading your site. It could be cheaper than you think.
