Can everyone read your website?

Great article on making your website accessible to everyone. Remember, the people buying online are not 20 years old. Read below….

Are you losing out on sales because your site is not accessible to some people?

Something that gets overlooked — a LOT — by the hippest, coolest, most stylish web designers out there, is the importance of making your website accessible to everyone. Not just to those eagle-eyed 20somethings who can read 8 point type from across the room (sigh), but to the people who use Screen Readers, or people who require mouse-free surfing options — or even those of us who have to pull out reading glasses when we’re doing a little surfing.

The thing about those eagle-eyed 20 somethings is that they’re not too likely to think “hmm, would a baby boomer have problems reading this incredibly tiny, light gray text on a white background?”

It’s tempting to blame that on the selfishness of youth, but unfortunately… we all do it.

If you’ve never actually had to navigate a website using a single button device (commonly used by people who do not have complete use of their arms or hands, for example), you might not realize just how annoying it is to try and deal with a long list of links. Or, if you’ve never listened to a Screen Reader you might not realize how bad it is to cram whole paragraphs into your image alt text (which you should NEVER do).

So we were thrilled to discover Access Keys. This British site is packed with valuable links and ideas, including the free AccessColor tool, which can tell you if your site is too hard to read because the text and background colors are too similar. Here’s an example of the difference between high and low contrast:

The top question is much, much harder to read just because it’s too similar to the background color.

Another accessibility issue worth considering is the different way that people with color blindness will view your site — and we’re talking over 8% of the population, mostly males. Full story….