7 easy ways to make your websites more accessible
by Beth
One last tech post before September comes to an end –this one is a primer on making websites available to people with disabilities.
Well, actually, it’s about making web sites accessible to people who have visual impairments. I’m blind and know a fair amount about this subject. Here are some tips:
- Avoid layering red and green or blue and purple. Those colors can be indistinguishable to some readers who are color blind (take a screenshot of your page and a site called Vischeck will let you preview how it might look to someone who is color blind).
- Use high contrast. If the background is light in color, make sure to use a dark text color, and vice versa. This doesn’t just help your readers with visual impairments, it makes reading easier for just about everyone.
- Make sure your font size isn’t too small. Tiny text is hard for anyone to read, and it can be impossible for some people with visual impairments. 14pt is a good font size for anyone, and 10pt text should be the absolute minimum.
- Use headings. Large headings can help some readers with low-vision find their way around a site, and screen readers (like the one I use to write and edit these blog posts) can scan through content more efficiently if headings are there to break the text up some.
- Use high-contrast with links, too. If the color of your links are much different than the rest of your text, they’ll be easier to spot.
- Avoid links that say “click here.” Screen reading technology allows blind readers to jump from link to link, and if the link only says “Click here” that’s all we hear when we’re jumping around like that — we don’t know where “here” will take us.
- Avoid putting text inside images. If a reader with a visual impairment enlarges the graphic to read what’s inside, the Text in the image gets blurry and difficult to read. Screen reading software reads text on the screen out loud, but it can’t read text inside images, leaving people like me who are blind in the, ahem, dark.
Like I said, I am particularly familiar with tips for making sites accessible to people who are blind or have low vision, so I rely on you readers to comment with ideas of ways web designers can make sites and blogs more accessible to people who have other disabilities. Together we can help designers create accessible sites for all