With more than 13.7% of Canadians having one or more disabilities, ensuring our websites are accessible is a necessary step to gaining the most traffic from a broad audience. While there are countless kinds of disabilities, formatting a website for accessibility is as simple as following several guidelines. Making websites accessible is simply an extra gesture, it is our responsibility when putting our content on the Internet.
While many types of technology can provide individuals with similar access to websites, those of us working in website development need to keep these devices and programs in mind when ensuring their website is usable by as many people as possible. Our clients are often varied, and barriers to accessibility detract traffic from our websites and
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Use easily-distinguishable fonts and text formatting
Color-blindness and dyslexia can make reading a website difficult for many individuals. In order to help people with these or similar conditions best access websites, use fonts approved for people with dyslexia, such Arial, Verdana, and Century Gothic in order to help these individuals see the difference between letters. For those with limited color vision, formatting information with different colors to categorize content creates barriers to understanding important information. Instead, consider using icons to help individuals tell this information apart.
5. Describe links with informative text-only
When an individual uses a screen reader, it can be difficult to understand what link text such as, “Click here,” leads to. When naming a link, ensure that descriptive language is used to help individuals understand what it links to. For instance, using as text as simple as, “Click here to advance to the next page,” can provide people with enough information to choose which links they need to select in order to make their intended selection. Using clear, logical language also makes this process far easier than vague or lengthy