ADA Accessibility and Good SEO

As a webmaster, I find that I can really capitalize on ADA Accessibility. Many organizations which are required to be ADA compliant don’t even know they are supposed to. So when I sit down in negotiations when them, and can inform them that their site needs this, and why, they understand immediately that I know things, and can help them with things that they did not think about.

It is even more impressive to them when I explain that by doing their SEO right, we kill two birds with one stone - we meet two needs, without increasing costs.  And there, is one of my “trade secrets” for getting contracts of a certain type.

If you understand what makes good SEO, and what makes a page ADA compliant, it becomes immediately clear that the two needs are almost completely identical. When you follow the rule of putting people first, good optimization makes a page almost 100% ADA compliant - the exception is when you have audio or video as part of your site, where you do have to provide alternate forms of those items (generally a transcript is considered acceptable), or when you have scripts on the page that require an alternate display (usually that alternate display also helps with SEO).

Here are the basics of ADA compliance for MicroWebmasters:

1. Most obviously, use alt tags on any images that are important to the overall message of the site. Make them human understandable and friendly, NEVER use them for keyword stuffing!
2. Use text links whenever possible for primary navigation. When you must use image links, make sure you use alt-tags in the images which clearly state what the link is.
3. Avoid excessive use of Javascript, Flash, Ajax, and other scripts which would interfere with interpretation of the page by a screen reader. If you do use those items, provide an alternate way of achieving the function.
4. Make sure contact email is machine readable, or machine executable. That doesn’t mean you have to have a bare email address on your site, it means avoiding encoding of email addresses that makes them non-machine readable, or providing a good form that can be used by someone using text reader software.
5. Give your page good contrast between text and backgrounds. This probably should be listed first, but it is actually less of an accessibility issue than it is a good design issue. Dark on light is easier to read than light on dark. Avoid low contrast, “vibrating” colors, or busy backgrounds behind text.
6. Keep your text sizes readable. Too small is a strain for many people. Generally a size 10 font (14px) is about as small as you want to go. Very small text size is a strain for more than just the legally blind, it is a hardship for about half the population!
7. Use common methods to keep the page readable in unexpected situations. Make sure it is readable if the stylesheet does not load. Make sure that it is readable if background images do not load. Include other basic failsafes to ensure that it is usable if something doesn’t work the way you think it should.
8. Provide an alternate for any audio or video that are an integral part of the site. A text transcript is acceptable.

The basics of ADA accessibility are pretty simple, and are naturally present when a site has been intelligently designed and optimized. Accessibility, like SEO, comes back to text. If the site is understandable with text only, then it will help with search engines, and people with visual or auditory limitations.