Using 10 years of design experience to help handmade businesses build websites into business assets.
3 common accessibility changes anyone can make
|
A lot of accessibility requirements are built into how the website is coded. Only a developer (hobbyist or professional) can make those changes. Thankfully, some of the changes that anyone can make have a big impact on the usability of your website. Alt textAlt text is a written description of an image. Screen readers use it to describe pictures to the visually impaired. In some websites, the alt text appears when the image is broken, which allows all users to make sense of the content. Harvard has a great article discussing best practices for alt text. Color selectionYou can make any color work but you need the right combination of colors. You want to make sure that your colors have enough contrast between each other so you can read it. You don’t want to design your website to have navy blue text on a black background. It would be nearly impossible to read without highlighting the text. You can use WebAIM’s contract checker to determine if your colors are legible. Font sizeA good rule of thumb is to have your body font be at least 16px. You don’t want your users to struggle to read the content you spent so much time putting together. Colors can also impact what font size you should use. The less contrast there are between colors, the larger you need to make the font so that it’s accessible. These changes can make a big impact for all of your customers. The more accessible you make your website, the more people can use it. If Thor had thumbs, he'd use your site. Have a great day! |
Ed, Cagebreakers Creative
Using 10 years of design experience to help handmade businesses build websites into business assets.
Last time we discussed 3 ways you can impact accessibility without touching code. Today, we'll go over 4 ways to write in more accessible ways. All of these elements combined help make your website clearer. Every bit of clarity helps your customers decide on your product over others. Use plain language Flowery and fun descriptors are great for a game. Using "Journal" to describe your customer's past purchases will make it harder for them to find information they might need to reorder. Basic...
Customers will leave a site in 3-5 seconds if they don’t find what they’re looking for. (This also includes loading time, so be careful!) You can use tools like BrowserStack to test your site in many different sizes without needing individual devices. Check your analytics to see which sizes your customers use most and then test your pages against those sizes first. What does a customer first see when opening up one of the pages you use in your marketing? Are they able to see your product...
If each page of your website is supposed to have a single goal... How do you define a goal for your homepage? Many people would consider your homepage the front door of your shop, but that’s not quite accurate. Your customers usually find your product page first. Think about how you market your art. Are you more frequently linking to a specific product or are you linking to the homepage? Most organic traffic will also likely go to your product page (because they were searching for a type of...