Semalt: New Tool From Wix That Helps Improve Your Website's Accessibility
Around one billion people from countries across the globe depend on accessibility features to navigate the internet. But when it comes to making a website more accessible, we are scratching our heads for a solution.
We begin to ask ourselves so many questions like how do we begin to analyze a site and ensure that everybody enjoys it? Thankfully, we now have a solution.
With the launch of Accessibility Wizard from Wix, we can now scan our client's website regularly for issues and have them fixed in minutes. This is great news, and we will be discussing this new tool extensively in this post.
What does this mean?
Accessibility for a website isn't something everyone is familiar with. According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a website's accessibility is determined by a user's ability to perceive, navigate and interact with the domain.
According to Google, website accessibility is the availability of a site's content. The accessibility of a site depends on how accommodating it is to users who don't match the general or typical user behavior. The question is, how does your site react to an "abnormal user?" someone who may be experiencing any form of impediment or disability. This abnormality may be non-physical or temporary.
Are there any legal obligations to how Accessible a site should be?
There are website accessibility laws, guidelines, rules, and policies which differ from country to country. In the US, for example, we have the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA). In the UK, there is the Equality Act of 2010. However, there are some global or standard guidelines, such as the WCAG 2.0 Level AA and the ADA.
The Wizard tool from Wix
Historically, Wix has been responsible for creating several vital guides and resources that have helped us resolve and understand accessibility issues. They have also helped automate several elements to help SEO pros as best they can.
The Accessibility Wizard is Wix's latest attempt to make an entire process as simple as possible for SEO pros who use the tool. Upon a command, the Wizard tool will scan an entire site after which we can see the results from the backend of drafted or live pages.
One of the reasons why this app is so unique is that it can and will identify issues on a website and prompt the user (SEO expert) to fix the identified problem with simple and straightforward instructions that are embedded into Wizard code. You can find these instructions by clicking a button, adding an alt text, or adjusting a slider.
We must mention that Wizard is unable to fix every accessibility issue. Here's a list of the problems we can fix using the wizard tool:
- Color contrast
- Visual indicators
- Alt text
- Skip to content button]no skipped headings
- Site language setting to match the content language
- Meaningful page names
While some of the uses that can not be detected by the Wix Wizard tool includes:
- Link text
- Use of color
- Zoomed content
- Text in image
- Accessibility Statement and media alternatives
You shouldn't disregard the Wix Wizard tool just yet. This tool also comes with a feature that links to numerous other resources that helps us detect and resolve these issues ourselves.
Once a check is complete, the tool rescans the site to ensure the fix didn't damage anything, to confirm that the fix was successful and there are no additional issues were developed before it tells us to publish the changes made on your site.
Whose job is it to ensure that your website is fully accessible?
According to Wix and Google, how accessible a site gets isn't the responsibility of the web Dev department alone. Nir Horesh, the Head of Accessibility at Wix, believes that the entire company plays a role in how accessible the site becomes. While the Dev team is the first team to contribute to making a site accessible other elements such as the:
- Project managers
- Designers
- Content writers
At every stage, these individuals hold a level of impact on the site's accessibility. When any member at Semalt comes in contact with any and every site, then they have an obligation to make it as accessible as possible in their respective posts.
This seems to be the same approach Google has towards accessibility. They have published guides to help professionals in different roles improve the accessibility of any site. This further emphasizes our point that making a site accessible is the role of the entire company and not the dev teams alone.
Why do you need to have your website accessibility reviewed?
While website accessibility and SEO often influence each other, you must understand that making your website accessible goes beyond just improving a site's ranking. As professionals, we are ethically and morally bound to ensure that a website can be used easily by any user without feeling discriminated in any way.
Everyone deserves to be able to access the wealth of information available online, and everyone must enjoy doing so.
Wix Wizard Accessibility
A website becomes far more powerful when it can accommodate the needs of everyone regardless of their abilities. Semalt uses this tool because it helps us create a website with unique accessibility settings that have been built right into the tool.
We must recognize that there are certain internet users with disabilities who defy all odds to live a happy life. Imagine a world without your favorite social media, blog, or video streaming platform. Imagine how difficult it would be if you weren't able to shop online or research. These are the reasons why Semalt gives its best to give people with disabilities an opportunity to interact with a website.
The importance of web accessibility
Visitors who have limited vision may find it difficult differentiating between the foreground and background of the pages of a site, which means poor user experience. It is our responsibility as professionals to ensure that everyone is happy with your website. With Wix Wizard, we can make things easier for individuals with:
- Visual disabilities
- Motor disabilities
- Hearing disabilities
- Cognitive disabilities
- Situational and temporary disabilities
The Accessibility Wizard is a tool that helps us build more accessible websites by actively involving us in the process. In three simple steps, this tool can identify an accessibility problem and offer actionable solutions to that problem.
Automated scanning and guidance:
The first thing we do is to discover the existing issues. After running a scan with Wix's tool, you will see the issues highlighted. Some of the common problems we find are:
- Insufficient color
- Alt text errors
- The contrast of text and icons
Actionable solutions
Once we're done with the scan, we will be presented with a list of possible solutions. At this point, issues that weren't detected may also surface. We will then work on the elements highlighted and improve the accessibility of your site.
We do our best to run Wizard anytime we edit a site so that no new changes negatively impact the accessibility of your site.
Conclusion
Having a website that is open to all not only gives you a better reason to sleep sound at night but also expands your market reach. Having a website that is fully accommodating will help you rank better on SERP. This means your audience and customer base get to grow.
At this point, where most purchases are made online, having a website that can't be accessed by everyone isn't a wise move. You're basically neglecting a market with a spending power of over $6 trillion. Please do the right thing today and have us make your website 100% accessible.
Interested in SEO? Check out our other articles on the Semalt blog.