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Today, I will show you why you should care about digital accessibility and I’ll then teach you how you can implement it on your websites, blogs, social media accounts, and email newsletters to make more money from your writing.

First, why should you care about including people with disabilities? There are three main reasons why inclusion is in your best interests.

1: By making your website, blog, or other content more accessible, you will improve the user experience of everyone who visits.

2: Improvements in accessibility often also lead to improvements in your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings.

3: It gives you the opportunity to reach a huge, mostly untapped market of highly loyal consumers who will advocate for you.

Most people don’t realize just how powerful the disability market can be. It’s a community that represents over 1 billion people globally and at least 60 million in the United States alone.

Also, imagine a market that is so used to having their needs ignored that we stand ready to eagerly engage with companies or individual entrepreneurs willing to make a sincere effort.

How to become more inclusive.

1: Focus on the most important thing.

Ask yourself why people are coming to your website or blog. What is the central purpose?

Are you trying to sell them copies of my books, or are you selling a service like coaching, speaking, writing, or editing?

Then, what can you do to make the process of finding information, and making a purchasing decision, as smooth as possible?

By doing these things, you will build a platform that is both accessible for disabled people, and enjoyable for everyone else.

2: Keep your design simple.

Webmasters are constantly telling us about things we can add to our sites to make them more effective. However, many of those additional items can often cause problems for people who depend on adaptive technology devices, like screen readers, screen magnifiers, or mechanical switch devices.

Think about an email sign-up form that pops up upon entry. These are called modals. Not a problem in and of themselves but, if improperly formatted, they can be a traps from which a disabled person cannot escape.

The only answer may be closing their browser, and deciding not to visit your site again.

If you are considering adding fancy options to your website, then please test them yourself, or check to verify that they have been tested with the most adaptive equipment.

3: Use a minimalistic approach.

As business owners, we are often tempted to put everything we offer on our home page. We don’t want to risk missing a sale so our home pages can become very cluttered.

This could easily turn off any visitor to your site but it is a real problem for a disabled person. That is because it takes us so much longer to navigate through all those options to find the one thing we really want.

So, ask yourself if you really need to have all of that information on your home page. If something can be moved to a sub-menu then, by all means, please do so. And, consider eliminating some items altogether.

4: Build your site or blog for keyboard use first.

Of all the things I have to teach people about accessibility, they are most surprised to learn that disabled people don’t usually have access to a mouse. When designers are not aware of this, they will often create roadblocks for disabled customers.

I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten to the end of the purchase process, and then couldn’t click the final button to complete the sale.

5: Helpful text options.

I imagine most of you are thinking how could I go wrong with text? If you use the default text options in most site development or blog content creation systems, you shouldn’t.

But, there are things you can do that will make your content even better.

First, you want text that is simple, clear, and bold. You don’t want your font choice to become blurry when expanded by someone using a screen magnification option.

This means including blank space between letters and words, as well as above and below words.

When it comes to your color options, you want to offer a default choice that has a very high contrast. If possible, you can offer multiple color choices. As I recently discovered, there are a wide variety of color combinations that can help a dyslexic visitor better understand your words.

And, consider giving people the option to invert colors. White text on a dark background can be very helpful to people with low vision, or to those using their mobile devices in extremely bright or low light.

7: Alternative text descriptions.

This one applies to your website, blog, social media posts, and mass emails.

Many of you have probably heard about using alt text for images but most of you probably don’t know just how critical they are. Alt text is short, descriptive text that replaces an image that is read by screen readers for users with visual impairments

This one matters most to screen reader users. If the alt text is not included, then these visitors will not know the image is there. The image just doesn’t exist. This problem can be compounded if the image in question was attached to a button, or link. In that case, the related item doesn’t exist either.

When it comes to embedding items, like YouTube videos or podcast players, those items will still display. But, the blind visitor won’t understand why they should care about the related video or audio.

Since the search engines do index these descriptions, I imagine you might be tempted to stuff them with keywords. That could help you with google, but won’t endear you to the visually-impaired customers as you would hope.

I advise you to try to put yourself in the place of a blind person, and imagine what bits of information you would need to truly appreciate the image you have created. I wish I could tell you that you can assign alt text to your images, and have it appear wherever you share that image. Unfortunately, that isn’t currently possible.

Some of you may wonder about depending on artificial intelligence providing those descriptions. AI could do that but, for now, it requires the visually impaired person to take several additional steps. And, those AI generated descriptions have yet to be proven reliable.

7: Use your headings.

I expect that most of you use headings when creating your blog posts. But, you probably don’t know why creating a consistent heading structure is important to disabled people. The reason behind this is that adaptive tech users can use headings to skip between sections on your site or blog like a sighted person skimming it would. Headings are also very helpful in longer emails. They allow us to save a lot of time

Obviously, this isn’t a detailed tutorial on digital accessibility. My intention is to help you better understand the needs of the disability community, and to help you avoid making the most common mistakes that could cost you business.

I am available to discuss the subject in more detail with interested writers, editors, site developers, publishers, or publicists. I really appreciate this opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with you.

Maxwell Ivey, known as The Blind Blogger; has transformed himself from blind failed carnival owner to online amusement equipment broker to digital accessibility expert. His unique approach is to change inclusion from a regulatory challenge to a competitive advantage. He shares his over 15 years of experience through writing, speaking, consulting, and podcasting from both sides of the mic. He believes that accessibility isn’t just the right thing to do, but it is in everyone’s best interest.

The Accessibility Advantage
Because accessibility isn’t just about compliance, it’s about innovation, reputation, and growth.
Email: theaccessibilityadvantage@gmail.com
Website: https://www.theaccessibilityadvantage.com

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