Web Design Accessibility

MohammadReza Keikaavousi
3 min readMay 3, 2021

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Accessibility generally means “the ability to access information on a website or software for anyone, even those with a particular disability or problem.”

Everyone uses services and applications on a daily basis to meet their daily needs. But the point is that many of these people have disabilities and certainly many of the services and websites available to these people are not usable.

Website optimization is important for better accessibility than SEO and search engine optimization. It is interesting to know that Google has recently ranked higher in its search results websites that have better principles of accessibility.

The need for accessibility on websites

Vision problems

Imagine a situation where a person with color blindness wants to get services from an online service. People with color blindness often cannot distinguish red from green. Now suppose you have a button that has a green background with red text! This button is the same color as the inside text for such people and practically does not allow diagnosis for the person. Or consider a blind person who wants to use a Screen Reader to read your business or online service website. If the coding of your page is not standard and you have not used semantic tags, you will definitely confuse the page reader and practically this person can not use your website.

Cognitive problems

consider someone who has dyslexia or dyslexia. People who are depressed usually have a slow reading speed. Poor spelling and dictation are other characteristics of these people. Even if the words are meaningless, they will have trouble reading them. So if your website has texts that cause problems for these people, it is practically impossible to use it. It is better for the texts of the website for these people to be written in an orderly and legible manner and to include images related to the subject. Others have poor short-term memory or cognitive impairment. Building complex processes in software confuses these people. A simple activity in the software should not be done after going through several pages and clicking on several items. People with cognitive impairments can hardly communicate with such software.

Hearing problems

If your website has a video playback section and this video has a narration. You should definitely include subtitles for the film or a readable alternative for the deaf. On the other hand, software alerts will be useless for these people if they are only audio.

Other problems

Accessibility must be observed even in the use of physical services of online services. If you offer a service to people in person from the web, you should definitely give priority to people with disabilities. For example, an online taxi that sends cars for people with disabilities that can carry a wheelchair, or the driver does not make a voice call if the person chooses the deaf option.

Conclusion

Nowadays, optimizing a website for people with disabilities is no longer a privilege for the website, but a basic necessity. Especially when your service is used by people on a daily basis or is a public system that a person is forced to use.

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