Accessibility for Peak SEO and UX

Fortunately, the algorithms used to scour the web and produce Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) favor many of the same practices used to ensure a site is accessible to people with disabilities. The same holds true for UX. Sites designed to maximize accessibility are easier to use for everyone, regardless of ability. And sites with better UX, rank higher in SEO.

Accessible Design and How It Improves SEO and UX

The following list is hardly exhaustive, but it’s a good sample of accessibility efforts that pay off with better organic search rankings and user experience.

Header Structure

The six levels of header tags establish a hierarchy for content on your site. Concise, logical headers help everyone navigate efficiently and effectively. This hierarchy improves navigation for screen reader and keyboard navigation users and assists people with cognitive disabilities to find the content they need. Ease of navigation and clearly defined sections of content are recommended by Google and improve UX for everyone. Bonus: Properly used headers can improve your chances of showing up as a Google featured snippet or in the People Also Ask section of a Google SERP.

Page Titles

Title tags provide the initial information about a page’s content for a person using a screen reader, and therefore help differentiate pages. Title tags are also the text displayed on SERPs, so providing a thoughtful, accurate title may help you get the click over your competition.

Schema Markup

The more complicated a website is (think e-commerce or dynamic content) the more important markup becomes. Screen readers utilize Schema Markup to accurately identify web content by giving context to ambiguous website elements. And Schema Markup adds rich content to your SERP snippet, which has been shown to improve click-through rates.

Multiple Navigation Options

Offering your site visitors a choice in how they work their way through your content ultimately improves UX by getting them to what they’re looking for faster. An alphabetical Site Index with search term synonyms helps users of all abilities find information. A Site Map that mimics the site’s navigation structure is an option many users appreciate. Finally, a well-coded Search feature allows visitors to bypass navigation steps and find content quickly. All three of these features can be utilized by assistive technology to find content.

Accurate Link Anchor Text

Link Anchor Text tells the user what to expect when clicking on a link. Appropriate and accurate Link Anchor Text sets appropriate and accurate expectations. Fulfillment of expectation is important for the experience of all users, regardless of how they are accessing your site.

Alternative Text

Concise, well-written image descriptions, in the form of Alt Text, allow site visitors with vision impairment to understand what is being conveyed by the visual media on your site, or to know that it is merely decorative and not essential information. Including Alt Text for the images on your site also allows search engines to determine the content of your images and provides addition keywords. Bonus: Alt Text will boost your images’ ranking in Google Image searches.

Video Captions

Captions make your video content accessible to people who can’t hear it, regardless of whether that’s due to disability or circumstance. People choose to watch videos without sound for many reasons: sleeping baby, noisy train, watching at work, privacy, etc. In fact, according to a 2019 report from Verizon Media and Publicis Media:

• 92% of U.S. consumers watch videos with the sound off on mobile.
• 83% watch with sound off elsewhere.
• 80% of consumers are more likely to watch an entire video when captions are available.
• 50% of consumers said captions are important because they watch videos with the sound off.

Closed captioning is smart business for your video content and advertising, plus provides accessibility for those without a choice.

Video Transcripts

A Video Transcript is a text version of a video, including all the dialog and descriptions of purely visual elements like demonstrations and imagery. A transcript provides an alternate format accessible to people with vision or auditory impairments, and people with slow internet. To boost your SEO, transcripts make video content searchable and indexable by search engines.

Avoid Acronyms, or Define Them

Acronyms communicate nothing when their reference is unclear. This is especially true when a person is using a screen reader because screen readers can read acronyms as if they were a word. The solutions to avoid confusion for all users are to not use acronyms at all, define them inline, or code your content using WCAG 2.1 AAA guidelines for including expanded forms of abbreviations.

The List Goes On . . .

If you’re getting the picture that accessibility should be part of your ongoing online strategy, SeeWriteHear can help.  Contact us today to get started with assessing your site and remediating your content for accessibility, plus improved SEO and UX!