Website Accessibility is continuing to increase in importance as we move into 2024 and one of our goals here at Total WP Support is to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA for all our new website builds moving forward.
Here’s our quick list of
1. The American Disabilities Act (ADA) includes websites in being required to be compliant with being accessible to a set standard. That opened the door for lawsuits and demand letters for compliance with ADA. Legal issues for non compliant sites are increasing steadily. Not being subject to legal action is always a nice feeling.
2. SEO benefit – websites that are accessible have been shown to get a higher hit rate on google. There’s a considerable overlap where improvement to accessibility also improves SEO performance. Simply put, steps involved in making web pages accessible to everyone also increases your chances of being found in search.
3. They say that approx 15-20% of people have some level of disability when it comes to using websites. Thats a lot of potential customers that will have easier access to your brand, content and products.
4. My favourite, it feels good to provide a positive experience to persons with disabilities. And feedback indicates that providing an accessible website is highly appreciated, often making for a very loyal long term customer.
Cons is the reverse of all the above. Not having an accessible site means there are legal risks, a decrease in seo and missing out on a significant portion of valuable website visitors.
There’s certainly a lot more pros and cons but i wanted to share my top 4.
In our experience so far, website accessibility development and then keeping a website accessible manually is a very labour intensive and technical job.
Thankfully, we have partnered with a very affordable service that automates most of the up front labour and takes care of all the ongoing compliance testing and reviews.
