Web Accessibility Assessment – FREE 30-Minute Consultation
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed by the US president, George H.W Bush, was introduced to improve the quality of life and make every place accessible to millions of physically disabled people. However, it was not until now that it caught the attention of the e-commerce industry, where its benefits were introduced in the technological world.
So, if you are a company that runs a Magento store, web accessibility can be a make or break for websites, mainly for e-commerce. With the increase in digitization globally, more and more people are buying things online. Thus, if you aren’t prepared for every type of customer in the market, including people with disabilities, you may be losing a lot of business.
Factcheck: You would be astonished to know that a 300% increase has been seen since 2018 in the web accessibility lawsuits: more than half target e-commerce and retailers in that number.
This may not be enough to convince you of the importance of ADA compliance for your Magento store. Hence, we have curated a list of expert insights to share their importance for your online Magento store. By implementing ADA features through Magento development, you can turn your Magento store into an accessible store so more people can browse your eCommerce store!
Why make your Magento store ADA compliant?
Making your Magento Store ADA compliant brings in an added list of benefits. First, you can experience a surge in your customer base. The search engines boost the ranking of your website, and Google prefers to recommend people to your site as it receives the widest variety of users. You will also experience an SEO boost on your website, ultimately boosting your business.
So, how do you get started with making your store ADA compliant to avail of these benefits?
Worry not; we have covered everything in this article.
Making your Magento store ADA compliant
Adopting ADA compliance into your Magento store is a cakewalk with the right information on the table. However, we have listed some excellent tips to help you design a website that follows all the laws.
Start with a Self-audit of the Website
There are two methods to check the website’s accessibility. It can be performed manually or on automation. However, you can utilize various techniques and tools to implement an in-depth accessibility audit. Here are some of the tips to help you get started.
- Color contrast accessibility: This web accessibility tool checks the websites for color contrast issues. Further, it offers recommendations on how you can fix these issues.
- A11y: It is a free tool that scans accessibility issues on your website depending on WCAG 2.1.
- Accessibility insights: This free chrome extension is a renowned tool for figuring out accessibility issues on your website.
If you wish to get your website checked by the experts, you can outsource from a Magento company that resides experts for accessibility audits and optimizations.
Timely Website Audit
Addressing your Magento website accessibility issues at the start is an obvious task. However, it shouldn’t be a one-and-done process. As you add new content to your website, the probability of more issues occurring on your website will also increase. Thus, you must audit your website for accessibility issues periodically so that you can address them on an immediate basis and don’t let them hamper your customer’s experience.
Speech Reader Feature
For blind and visually impaired website visitors, a speech reader-friendly feature to understand the contents will ensure a great customer experience. So do test your website functionality using this feature. However, if any issues persist, such as the text getting repeated or the content being read out of order, fix them for a smooth experience for the users ahead.
Avoid Animations and popups.
Keeping a minimum number of elements and features on your website eliminates distraction by avoiding any risk to users with seizures.
Tip: The guidelines also recommend that a website shouldn’t have any elements that flash more than three times per second.
This is done to avoid elements like popups, auto-playing videos, and animation to help users with photosensitive seizure disorders to access your website without any issues.
One of the top things that will improve your website accessibility is to ensure that all the features can be used with a keyboard. It includes auto-completing text, navigating pages, selecting items, clicking on links and buttons, and closing the dialogue box. In addition, it has proved helpful for users who can’t use a computer mouse due to any disability.
Additional Tips to Ace Your Magento Store ADA Compliance Efforts
Here are some additional points that could be great add-ons to your efforts to make your Magento website ADA compliant.
- Ensure that you use alt text descriptions for the images included on your website.
- A description must accompany the audio files.
- Do add captions for people with hearing disabilities to all the video content.
- Avoid including flashing images or strobe effects as it may cause negative health issues.
- Ensure that the data tables have clear label headers for rows and columns to be understood well when read aloud.
- Label the special page instructions with a field label that informs the user about what they do.
- Add helpful links to your web page, allowing website visitors to find accessibility options.
- Add helpful links to the content and not embed video content into the page for much smoother access.
FAQ’s
Que: What if any website is not ADA compliant?
Ans: If a website is not ADA compliant, the organization can face a lawsuit in such a case when a person with any disability claims to be unable to access your website. You may face a legal fee, a possible settlement, and even a potential public relations problem. In many cases, you would even have to rebuild your website to turn out to be ADA compliant.
Que: Why is ADA compliance essential for websites?
Ans: ADA compliance was introduced to protect the rights of people with disabilities. These included all aspects of employment and accessing public services such as transportation. It also guaranteed access to private establishments such as hotels, commercial buildings, restaurants, etc.
End Notes
These expert tips on making your Magento store more ADA compliant will help your website visitors with disabilities access your site with ease. With a small change, you will not only follow the ADA compliance laws but will also provide your customers with a unique customer experience.
If you wish to seek the help of an expert to implement ADA compliance features on your website, feel free to connect with us. We will get your Magento website in the best shape possible regarding ADA compliance.
