The most apparent benefit of digital accessibility is that it assists people with disabilities in engaging with your website. Apart from this welcoming approach towards all visitors—accessible websites obtain higher conversion rates than inaccessible websites.
Search engines use artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand digital content. Search engines or web crawlers are constantly crawling the internet to catalog content. Websites are then ranked and indexed in categories, so it is easier for the bots to comprehend the content of your website.
Websites that are accessible are practical for search engines to crawl.
Since search engines are essentially bots, they have limitations and may not fully understand all the content on a website. So, if you make sure everything is well labeled or has alternative text, it will show up in people's searches without any problems. Websites that are easily accessible to people with disabilities can help improve the search engine optimization of your site.
Not many know, but accessibility remediation can help your website get higher rankings on search engines. We gathered some of the accessibility secrets for ranking optimization.
The use of Alternative Text
Providing alt-text for visual content offers an inclusive experience for users who can't perceive or identify photos or videos. The same goes for search engines, as they don't notice visual content unless it is correctly labeled. We strongly recommend using alternative text to improve image SEO for your websites.
Increase search standing by creating sitemaps
It would help if you kept in mind another aspect of SEO—HTML sitemaps. An HTML sitemap is a file that grades and lists all the important pages on a website. Indexing is basically how search engines or bots gather information from your landing pages and sort them. They are a great way to offer search engines a list of all the main content on your website.
Improved content increases audience engagement and retention.
Website accessibility is all about meeting the needs of your customers. This means giving them what they need, not just in words but through visuals or sound. For instance, WCAG 2.1 stipulates that if you provide text for people who are more advanced than lower secondary education level, then simple, clear language will be beneficial when communicating with them—helping to improve search engine positioning because Google likes well-written content better.
- Straightforward, explained content is easier to digest than technical jargon. Consider avoiding it if you want your audience of all kinds—neurocognitive and memory-related disabilities included—to be able to read the content on your Web pages. This way, they won't have trouble understanding it or getting lost in translation.
- Avoid using complicated language to keep your writing simple for all readers, no matter their intellect levels. It benefits regular people like yourself by making it more accessible than technical jargon used throughout the content or website design.
- An effective way of writing concise content is by using lists, headings, and other elements. Visitors are more likely to take action when they see a well-written copy with precise keywords in a natural way for search engines to determine the purpose of each page.
Accessibility makes the digital world a better place for all (including machines).
Our WCAG Monitoring Scans is the perfect way to stay up-to-date with all of WCAG standards. With our robust and precise accessibility service, you can remediate your site for conformance and determine the steps needed to ensure it meets accessibility requirements.
Keep in mind that the above features won't be entirely beneficial unless your site is technically and fully optimized for people with disabilities.
You can also easily convert your inaccessible website to an accessible one by using EqualWeb technology on your website.
To start your 7-days free trial, click here.
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