Web accessibility of websites and the platforms that best solve this problem

There are many different requirements for modern Internet sites, and every day they become more stringent and voluminous. In particular, one of the extremely important parameters today is web accessibility of websites. In its classical presentation, it implies the development of such resources that people with disabilities could use without problems. Here we are talking about the perception of information, interaction with the interface, simple and convenient navigation. This can be achieved by using contrasting colors, adding a voice recognition option or voicing the site for visually impaired and blind people, enlarging the controls, thinking through the navigation in detail, ensuring its simplicity and logic.

That is, initially, web accessibility of sites and applications meant ensuring the convenience of working with them for people with problems with visual, auditory, cognitive, speech, physical, neurological functions. But modern practice has shown that such solutions also bring good benefits to people without disabilities.

This category includes users of smart watches, smartphones and any other devices with a small screen diagonal or different input modes, people in situational restrictions, whether it is too bright sunlight, the inability to listen to audio, low Internet speed. Modern web accessibility should also be targeted at older people with reduced physical capabilities, audiences with temporary problems, such as lost glasses or a broken arm.

In today's review, we will take a closer look at this requirement and pay attention to the importance of its implementation. We will highlight the main principles of web accessibility and get acquainted with the tools available to modern software developers and testers, designers, content creators, and managers. We will also present the results of one of the studies on this topic. In particular, we will highlight traditional content management systems and platforms for developing online resources that best meet the principles of web accessibility.

More about web accessibility of sites

Web accessibility, or simply “accessibility”, “web accessibility” or “eAccessibility” This is a term indicating that websites or Internet applications were designed and developed in such a way that they could be conveniently used by the widest possible segment of the audience. This also includes those who have physical, sensory, and cognitive limitations. This approach ensures the ability to use products for people with visual, hearing, and motor impairments. That is, it provides the ability to understand, perceive the site, interact with it, and navigate through different sections.

Currently, the boundaries of web accessibility of sites have become wider. By and large, the basic principles must be taken into account when creating absolutely any sites, because this can improve the usability of the resource for all users, make the site understandable on an intuitive level, logically structured, and easy to use. To implement this, it is necessary to implement the relevant principles at absolutely every stage of development. This is relevant for software code, audit, UI and UX design, testing and more.

All the requirements, recommendations, and practices that apply to web accessibility can be divided into the following categories:

• Technical. Here we include everything that is directly related to writing software code and subsequent testing.
• Content. These are moments related to the creation of text and graphic material, videos.
• Design. Here we mean the external design of the sites, thoughtfulness and ease of use, and even enjoyment of interaction.
• Organizational. They are also often called legal. We are talking about compliance with legal norms and requirements, the internal policy of the company, and the competent organization of all processes occurring in it.
• Audit. This is all that is related to conducting various audits, determining the availability of sites.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that some of these requirements will be quite universal. That is, they are actively used today in many other areas of software development and design. But there are still a number of aspects that are specific to web accessibility.

Advantages of implementing web accessibility

If you follow the principles of web accessibility when developing your own software products and websites, you will be able to personally evaluate a number of significant advantages of the implemented solutions:

1. High reliability indicators. Such websites will work as correctly as possible on any user devices, on different operating systems, browsers. They can be easily combined with all kinds of assistive technologies.
2. Guaranteed accessibility. You provide access to your information, goods or services to absolutely all users, regardless of their abilities or physical condition. That is why it is recommended to regularly monitor the availability of sites and services.
3. Compliance with strict legal requirements. Currently, many countries are introducing their own laws and regulations regarding the availability of Internet sites. This is especially true for sites of government agencies, services, and services. But recently, such requirements have increasingly been imposed on ordinary private sites. That is, by initially implementing the principles of web accessibility on your site, you can avoid various blockings, prohibitions, and restrictions.
4. Following the principles of social responsibility. The fact that you make your site web-accessible will indicate concern for users and emphasize your responsibility. As a result, higher loyalty from the consumer market is guaranteed.
5. Improving user experience. Those sites that are initially created based on the principles of web accessibility will be distinguished by maximum simplicity and ease of use for absolutely any person, including the elderly, people with disabilities, users who are currently in conditions of limited access to the network, etc.
6. Improving SEO indicators. One of the mandatory conditions for effective website promotion will be its ease of use for the consumer, the value and usefulness of the content, its simplicity and accessibility in perception. This means that the implementation of web accessibility principles minimizes revisions and adjustments at the stage of website optimization, and will ensure maximum results in the end.

All these features allow us to confidently say that we are talking about a truly good practice designed to ensure absolutely equal access for all users, improve ease of use and increase the value of the site as a whole. Having implemented everything as correctly as possible, you will be able to close legal, reputational, ethical issues. It also guarantees an expansion of user reach through recommendations, as well as an increase in positions in search results. This means that more people will visit your site, which will ultimately have a positive impact on the level of income.

We must not forget about the innovative component either. You will be introducing advanced technologies to your site that are guaranteed to interest the audience, will be able to improve the user experience, retain regular customers and attract new ones, and increase the level of loyalty on their part. As a result, web accessibility will help to form a good brand reputation, will allow you to stand out from the competition.

The main components of web accessibility

Web accessibility is based on the following main components:

• user agents: this includes browsers, email clients, plugins, etc.;
• screen magnifiers, screen readers, voice assistants, and other assistive technologies;
• website or application design, its program code, text, graphic, and video content;
• graphics editors, code editors, CMS (content management systems), testing extensions, and everything that can be classified as development tools;
• the people who create the site, as well as those who will use it in the future.

All of these components are closely interconnected in web accessibility. If in practice it happens that one of them is unfinished and is not used, this will negatively affect the overall level of eAccessibility. Let's say you made a mistake when implementing an HTML tag in a browser. What will happen? The most common problem is that a screen reader cannot declare it correctly. To fix it, developers will need to additionally write a custom element.

TOP web accessibility principles

Web accessibility principles are what the entire technology is based on. They indicate what your site, its interface, content, and individual elements should be like. So, here we are talking about the following 4 key principles:

1. Perceivable. This is about the need to create an interface that the audience could perceive using different senses, be it eyes, skin, or ears.
2. Operable. It is important to provide several ways to interact with the interface. As an option, this can be the use of a keyboard, mouse, joystick, remote buttons, voice, etc.
3. Understandable, that is, understandability. Such an interface, as well as the content of the site should be simple and easy to perceive. The audience should not have any difficulties at the stage of interaction with any interactive elements provided on the site.
4. Robust, that is, stability. Here we are talking about the compliance of the application or site interface with the relevant technical specifications, as well as ensuring their stable operation on different devices, browsers. It is also important to provide for the possibility of additional connection of assistive technologies.

As a result, by the first letters of each item, we get the abbreviation POUR. If you see it somewhere, you should understand that these are the principles of web accessibility. It is on their basis that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) were developed, which are now used by specialists around the world when developing websites and any other software products.

Main web accessibility tools

Currently, different tools are used to implement the principles of web accessibility in practice. Conventionally, they can all be divided into 2 separate groups:

1. Universal. All these tools will be presented here, which can be used in practice by each representative of the team working on the project. This can include what is introduced into WCAG and any other W3C WAI recommendations in the field of creating accessible content, interfaces, documentation, information on user research, best practices, audit.
2. Specific. These are tools developed for individual categories of specialists, be it software developers and testers, designers, creators of text and graphic content, managers. Here, too, a fairly wide range of solutions adapted to the specifics of the upcoming work is presented.

We will consider the main specific tools in more detail for each individual group of users.

Web accessibility tools for developers and testers

Modern developers and testers working on ensuring web accessibility of sites and applications will have the following tools at their disposal:

• semantic layout, HTML, SVG, CSS, JavaScript, as well as a number of other technologies, programming languages;
• libraries containing special components, ready-made tested templates available for downloading and subsequent use;
• Accessible Rich Internet Applications, that is, ARIA markup, which is a set of attributes that can be added to HTML elements, thereby increasing the accessibility of Internet pages for people with disabilities, especially for those who use screen readers in practice, as well as simplifying complex interfaces through the use of assistive technologies;
• code validators — programs, tools that check the code for its compliance with rules, norms, standards, identifying incorrect tag nesting, syntax errors and other problems that interfere with the correct operation of pages and prevent them from being perceived by search engines, browsers;
• automated tests that allow you to use scripts and software tools for testing applications, software, eliminating manual work, reducing time, minimizing the likelihood of errors associated with the human factor, simplifying the testing of large projects;
• manual testing using additional technologies, involving real users, which will allow you to check in practice the quality and functionality of the site, its accessibility for a wide segment of the audience;
• specialized web services, bookmarklets, developer tools, browser extensions that simplify the implementation of upcoming work, allowing you to quickly select the most effective solution in each specific case.

Web accessibility tools for designers

Modern Web designers also have a wide range of tools at their disposal to ensure that websites and applications are accessible to a wide range of consumer audiences. Here are just the main solutions:

• plugins for graphic editors that allow you to add captions to certain elements as quickly and easily as possible, check contrast, color compatibility, etc.;
• browser extensions, as an option for simulating color blindness, calculating optimal contrast ratios, and more;
• services that allow you to visualize the focus order, generate color palettes, etc.;
• quite large libraries with ready-made templates and components, complete design systems that you can use as a basis for your work;
• everything related to research, UX design, including interviews, the so-called “persona method”, usability testing, and much more.

Web accessibility tools for creators of text and graphic content

We include content managers, editors, copywriters, and communication designers in this category of users. In their daily work, they can use the following tools:

• services and programs that allow you to automatically create subtitles for videos;
• online platforms and text editors that specialize in checking grammar, spelling, and sentence style;
• plugins built into graphic editors that allow you to simulate color blindness, check and adjust the contrast level, and perform a number of related tasks;
• applications that detect such blinking, flashes in animation, video content that are difficult to notice with the naked eye.

Web accessibility tools for managers

The following tools can be distinguished from this category:

• specialized courses, workshops, meetups, online and offline consultations, as well as everything related to training employees in web accessibility principles;
• so-called maturity models, designed to determine the current state of a project, identify errors and weaknesses, and create a strategy for improvement;
• an employee competency matrix that allows for flexible personnel management, assessing an individual's compliance with job requirements, establishing the actual level of development, identifying gaps in skills or knowledge, thereby planning subsequent training and development;
• an internal company policy in the field of web accessibility, including a set of rules, regulations, and requirements that must be taken into account in the work process.

Everything we talked about above can rightfully be called the basis for creating web-accessible sites. All these requirements and tools are actively used by modern specialists in practice, but still, the effectiveness of their work largely depends on what platform the site is being created on. Today, there are platforms that are ideal for launching such resources, as well as those solutions that are best avoided, because the result, even with quite serious efforts, will be much to be desired. In order to understand which platforms are best suited for developing web-accessible sites, a fairly large-scale study was conducted. We will talk about its results in more detail below.

The essence of the study from HTTP Archive

HTTP Archive is an open source project managed, so to speak, by a community of enthusiasts. They specialize in tracking data on the creation and subsequent operation of online platforms. As part of this study, a custom report was created containing information on the operation of various content management platforms. The information in it is updated monthly. In this case, the data was collected from the first million main pages of the sites. It was this information that became the basis for the site availability report.

Running a little ahead, we will say that the ratings that are widely used today in the field of Internet measurements and web security do not quite agree with the real popularity of domains. Moreover, this information could change daily during the studies, and also be subject to manipulation by Internet attackers. But still, it was possible to get a general picture about which content management systems and website creation platforms turned out to be the most effective in creating web-accessible resources.

Now let's move on directly to getting acquainted with the results of such studies.

TOP CMS in terms of web accessibility

During the study that we are talking about at the moment, one of the goals that HTTP Archive set for itself was to directly determine the most effective CMS platforms, as well as identify their shortcomings.

So, if we talk directly about traditional content management systems, then the leading positions in the report were occupied by such platforms as Adobe Experience Manager and Contentful. Their indicators are almost identical. 2nd place was shared between Sitecore and WordPress.

In general, the first 5 positions in terms of availability were distributed between the following platforms:

1. Contentful and Adobe Experience Manager with an availability rate of 87%.
2. WordPress and Sitecore with an availability rate of 85%.
3. Contao, Craft CMS, Drupal with an availability rate of 84%.
4. TYPO3 CMS and Liferay with an availability rate of 83%.
5. DNN with an availability rate of 82%.

Here we would like to draw your attention to the fact that three of the four platforms placed in 1st and 2nd positions have closed source code. In particular, these are Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful and Sitecore. That is, it turns out that only WordPress works on the basis of open source code. It would be reasonable to assume that most people thinking about using a CMS in practice would bet on products that they can download and install themselves. That is why the choice mainly falls on open source platforms. But, as you can see in the study, the first positions are occupied by closed source solutions. The only reasonable explanation here is that these products are used in practice by large corporations. Those who have more extensive resources to solve problems in the field of web accessibility. In addition, open source software gives developers more freedom in terms of action. As a result, errors can be made that provoke a deterioration in web accessibility.

TOP platforms for creating web-accessible sites

In parallel with the analysis and study of CMS, HTTP Archive specialists also paid special attention to specialized platforms on the basis of which sites are created. In particular, comparisons of 3 leading tools were carried out here: Wix, Squarespace, Duda, as well as a number of other options. The web accessibility ratings of such platforms turned out to be significantly higher in comparison with traditional content management platforms. This allowed us to conclude that private tools control certain data and variables much better, especially in comparison with open source CMS. Those that provide users with broader and freer opportunities to perform certain actions.

So, the final rating of platforms designed to create web-accessible sites based on the results of this study looked like this:

• Wix with an availability rate of 94%.
• Squarespace with an availability rate of 92%.
• Google Sites with an availability rate of 90%.
• Hubspot CMS Hub and Duda with an availability rate of 87%.
• Pixnet and Weebly with an availability rate of 86%.

By the way, the once extremely popular Tilda was only in 10th place in this rating with an availability rate of only 83%.

That is, the leading positions were received by sites developed on Wix. It was here that the Web Accessibility Points turned out to be much higher than those of the closest analogues created on any other platform and data management system. Each of you must decide for yourself how to use this information. But the figures given speak for themselves. So make informed and well-founded conclusions.

Additional arguments in favor of creating web-accessible sites

In modern conditions, web accessibility is one of the mandatory requirements for any online platforms. Let us repeat that this practice is designed to remove all sorts of barriers in the course of interaction with Internet resources for people with situational limitations, disabilities, socio-economic difficulties, problems with Internet speed, bandwidth, and even for those who simply forgot their glasses at home. If you create high-quality sites, pay due attention to their design, development, editing, then a huge number of people will be able to get access to information and functionality.

And it would be foolish not to use in practice all the opportunities that will be at your disposal in this case. Alternatively, the same SEO specialists will be able to significantly reduce their efforts and time on implementing strategies aimed at improving ranking in organic search. For example, not so long ago, no one paid much attention to website performance, and radical changes occurred only after search engines accepted this parameter as one of the key ranking factors. But at the same time, many knew that the speed of the site directly affects the level of sales, the effectiveness of advertising, and therefore, although indirectly, it still affects the position of the site in search results.

A similar situation is observed today with web accessibility. Many still do not pay due attention to it, although in the foreseeable future, search engines may well take this parameter as another ranking factor. But even now, it is clearly not worth neglecting such changes on your sites. Just think: according to the latest data, approximately 8% of men and 0.5% of women in the world are colorblind. Is it reasonable for you, as a specialist or business that cares about attracting organic traffic to your site and ensuring high rankings, to exclude more than 4% of users from your audience just because the site will have incorrectly selected color combinations or will use pale shades?

Moreover, the implementation of such work is not as difficult as it may seem at first glance. Today, Wix and Squarespace are actively working in the field of ensuring high web accessibility. Perhaps, it is time for other platforms and businesses to adopt their experience, because it is really convenient, reasonable, and promising.

Summing up

All the information that we have provided in today's review is intended to attract the attention of business representatives, developers and testers of sites, applications, designers, copywriters, content managers, marketers and many other specialists to the importance of developing web-accessible products. This requirement, which has not yet gained widespread publicity, has not been included in the official documentation of search engines, but still plays a very important role in the stable promotion of resources in online spaces, ensuring a high level of trust from the target audience and the market as a whole. This is what will become the basis for a constant influx of users, holding their attention over a long period of time, forming a good reputation and receiving a stable income over a long period of time.

If you want to significantly simplify your work on improving the web accessibility of your sites and applications, additionally use mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service in your work. This is what will allow you to bypass all sorts of restrictions, access blocking, parse data, use automated solutions for working with routine and similar tasks. And you will also be able to maintain high levels of confidentiality of work on the Internet and reliable protection from any unauthorized access.

You can learn more about these mobile proxies at the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy, as well as during a free two-hour test. If you encounter any difficulties in your work, if you need help from specialists, contact the round-the-clock technical support service.

Share this article: