Did you know that if your site passes accessibility tests you will rank higher in Google’s search results?

You may have already known that 25% of people have some sort of visual disability. This can be something not very noticeable such as being colorblind. There are several variations of colorblindness.  It may be they have difficulty with contrast. With some simple adjustments to how you post content to your website, you can avoid making it difficult for people to read what you want them to read. I live with two colorblind people. My husband is used to his red/green issues. His wardrobe is primarily black, white and gray to keep it simple. We’ll throw in some bright colors he can see or that I can assure him bring out the green in his eyes, but he relies on asking me “if this goes”. Traffic signals, if they are on their side, can throw him initially. Laser tag – we have to request the blue and yellow lights or else he shoots his own team constantly, and he’s a dead aim! When websites have charts that are color dependent, it can be difficult to distinguish what is being shared. This can be resolved. Once you are aware of what needs to change, you can work on incorporating the tips into how you produce content for your website, reports, presentations, and videos.

Here is a free tool from WebAim to check the contrast. This is handy as you are rebranding, launching a new brand, and deciding on website colors for links on dark backgrounds and light backgrounds. https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

You can also run your pages through a checker https://wave.webaim.org/

Depending on your company policies for accessibility, you’ll have to determine how much you want to comply with and change. We have brought several companies into full compliance and taught them how to create accessible PDFs, Excel sheets and more. If you are in medical, or public education, government sectors, you will need to do this. We were able to take the Orange County Cemetery District into full compliance, including their posted meeting agendas. It was difficult because they came from many resources, depending on the month’s issues, but they were able to convert their procedures to ensure fully accessible documents.

We worked with them over a few months by evaluating, then starting with their website templates. From there, we helped them update the content, create a form for the people running across pages they had difficulty with and then addressing those specific issues first.

I was certified in 2019 and am able to evaluate your site and help you obtain the same certification, if you need it. You may also just want your site friendlier for anyone visiting it. If you’d like help with this visit this page.