We all know (I hope) that the Americans with Disabilities Act is all about allowing disabled people access to otherwise unaccessible things. Typically this means wheelchair ranks and braille in elevators, but there’s a digital aspect to the ADA requirements for your website. What about your website? How do ADA and SEO relate?
Accessibility is Key to SEO
Of course it is! One large part of SEO is to make your website user friendly, understandable and easy to navigate. Google made these rules and didn’t only consider people who can see and hear perfectly. They considered the 25% of Americans who can’t as well.
And so should you
First of all you’re actually discriminating against people who can’t see or hear. You may even get sued over your website’s lack of ADA compliance.
Secondly and arguably equally as important is you’re losing business! if 20-30% of your website visitors who wanted your service couldn’t find out how to contact you you’re missing a huge segment of revenue.
OK – I need ADA and SEO Help. Now What
Glad you see the light! First of all, let us give you a few website audit. We’ll tell you everything that is not ADA compliant as well as any other website optimizations recommended to help your site and business. Yep. It’s that easy – just let us know your url and a few days later you’ll have answers.
You can also Check your website for ADA compliance yourself with some online tools. Albeit they are incomplete and can’t tell you exactly what to fix but it’s an easy place to start. Keep in mind these tools only uncover about 50% of potential ada and seo issues on your website. A manual review by a WCAG 2.0 specialist is highly recommended.
There are Other Areas of ADA and SEO Intermingling
A lot of SEO is focusing on Mobile as such ADA SEO should as well. Consider how someone with limited vision works a website on a phone. They will likely zoom in to see small text. Can your mobile site zoom enough? Do you even know? What about video? If someone can’t hear well you need to allow for captions or at least a transcript. There are so many areas that ADA and SEO are basically one in the same. Give a Dallas SEO Consultant a call and we’ll spend all the time you need explaining it.
For more information visit SEJ’s Beginners Guide to ADA Compliance for Websites