Accessibility
In the excitement to create and launch your web site, it can be tempting to ignore accessibility issues, but in so doing you may be reducing the potential audience for your services - and ultimately lose out on sales. It is also good practice to ensure that your site is as accessible as possible.Here is a selection of steps you should take to ensure that your site is fully accessible:
- Ensure that all your images have appropriate alt tags. The alt tag should describe the image in sufficient detail such that, if the user had images switched off, they would not miss out on any content
- Ensure that the user can navigate all links on your site by using the tab and shift tab keys
- Ensure that the site navigation is user friendly - for instance navigation that relies on flash or JavaScript can be inaccessible for those who have these features switched off in your browser, or are simply not compatible
- Consider using access keys for key links on your site to enable users to utilize the keyboard more in navigating your site
- Ensure that the size of your images is not too big, as this will slow down the loading of your site and many visitors may give up
- Check that your site displays properly on all recent versions of Internet Explorer, and also the other popular browsers, for instance Safari, Firefox and Opera.
If you would us to perform an accessibility review of your website, and point out recommendations for making your site more accessible, please contact us.
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