With the examples of offenders and principles of accessibility tackled in the previous part, let’s explore the overlaps between SEO and accessibility and discover how we can make a positive impact through our work before even conducting an accessibility audit.
Through Page Titles
Page titles serve as a way to give visitors an idea of what a web page is all about and to appear as the primary heading in search results. They help provide context and enable users to grasp the page’s content.
Titles serve a dual purpose of helping users determine the relevance of information on a page and distinguishing content when multiple tabs or pages are open. For screen readers, page titles are crucial in guiding users during navigation between pages.
When creating page titles, it is important to prioritize the user’s experience over cramming in keywords for search engine optimization. Doing this ensures your website is easily accessible and follows SEO best practices.
Through Headings
When it comes to SEO, the H1 tag is essential for headings as it gives an overall idea of the main content of a webpage. On the other hand, H2-H6 tags are utilized to specify the layout of the webpage.
Assistive technologies, like search engine crawlers, rely on headings to efficiently navigate a webpage and locate specific content sections.
Like SEO guidelines, it is essential to follow certain rules when using heading tags for accessibility. These rules include using only one H1 tag, ensuring that all headings are related to the corresponding content, and using headings only when content is underneath them.
Through Sitemaps
Sitemaps that can be accessed on the website are helpful for users to locate specific content, especially if the site’s navigation is complicated. They are crucial in making a website accessible by giving a summary and easy navigation to all the significant pages on the site.
Sitemaps are also beneficial for SEO as they assist search engine crawlers in locating links to different pages on the website. This is particularly advantageous when those pages are not linked elsewhere on the site.
Through Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the words or phrases that are hyperlinked to another webpage and provides a brief description of the linked page. The anchor text assists users in determining whether or not they should click the link and visit the linked page.
Screen readers usually go through a webpage using the tab key and will let users know when they come across a link before reading the linked text.
If the users find the link beneficial, they press the enter key to access it.
Search engine bots utilize anchor text to comprehend the meaning of the target webpage. Moreover, the sentence that encloses the hyperlink is beneficial for enhancing search engine optimization and making the content accessible to all. While creating an anchor text, ensure it is a more complex and common ‘click here’ text. Instead, it should be concise and related to the linked page.
To Be Concluded
Sometimes, an accessibility audit may not be necessary if you can remediate the concern through the page titles, headings, sitemaps, and anchor text. We will cover a few more features as we conclude this series, so stay tuned!
Create a Non-Discriminating Usable Website with AllAccessible
AllAccessible’s remediation system is the most comprehensive, offering non-invasive adjustments and removing the need for developers to go through a lengthy punch list of code changes. Head to our website and take our accessibility audit to see how we can make your website more user-friendly!