Lately, there has been a crackdown on the accessibility of websites. That is why you see more accessibility icons and links on websites.
My friend Cornelius Butler specializes in this. His website is Butler New Media and your website can be evaluated by real users who have disabilities and they can notify you of any specific issues they find. Your website would be tested using screen readers (software that read websites for the blind) such as Apple Voiceover, Google Talkback, and JAWS (sites actually behave differently with different screen readers and these are just three that are mentioned here. The websites will also be tested for contrast and other accessibility issues.
So if you want to avoid a lawsuit contact Cornelius today and mention that Michael Rock sent you.
Accessibility Issues Your Website Can Have
ARIA
ARIA stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications and is a W3C specification that uses markup language that is added to HTML to assist reading devices and other accessibility devices to communicate with people that have disabilities.
CONTRAST
The background color of a website may conflict with the text color making it hard for people with color-blind issues to read the content. Having an image as a background can be a problem as well.
NAMES AND LABELS
The links on your website should have names and labels attached to them to help website readers communicate with the user.
TABLES AND LISTS
Special markup codes can be used on lists and tables of a website to help screen readers know what order to read the content to the user.
NAVIGATION
How the navigation is displayed on a website helps the screen reader identify where to start reading the content. You may have seen “skip to content” links in HTML code. Links should be tab-able to skip to the next section of content and the screen readers should be able to do so also.
How to Test your Website for Accessibility Issues
There are numerous websites you can visit online to test your website like W3.org and plugins to browsers that you can use like Lighthouse, but it is best to use a professional company like Cornelius Butler’s if you want the job done right and make sure that you are safe from lawsuits.