Top tips on improving site accessibility for users and SEO

One in ten visitors to your website is likely to have a disability.  This could range from colour blindness to dyslexia.  Or it could simply be a user with poor web skills.   Use of mobile devices to access websites can exacerbate accessibly issues.  

Website accessibility is defined and governed by the European Accessibility Act. The Act will be enforced in Europe in June 2025. Although UK is no longer part of the EU, it makes sense to use it as a benchmark for accessibility on your site.

Why is it important to improve the accessibility of a website?

Making your site accessible not only helps users with impairments but helps everyone effectively consume your content. It's also crucial for making it easy for search engines and AI bots to crawl and understand the content on your website.

Consequently, great accessibility delivers increased engagement and in turn, improved rankings and can increase organic traffic. It’s a win: win! 

Which content elements contribute to good accessibility?

Great content that is easy to read and focused on answering the search intent
 

• Navigation: create clear, intuitive navigation menus.
• Page titles: use descriptive page titles that accurately describe the page content.
• Headings: structure the page content using a proper heading hierarchy to aid navigation and understanding.
• Anchor text: use descriptive and meaningful anchor text for hyperlinks to help screen reader users.
• Breadcrumb Links: incorporate breadcrumb links to help users understand where they are in your site.
• Alt text: provide descriptive alternative text for pictures to help the visually impaired.
• Readability: use legible fonts (sans serif, non-italic, non-oblique) to assist people with dyslexia and appropriate colour contrast to help those with colour blindness.
• User Interactions:  Make interactive elements easy to use using keyboard navigation with clear caption instructions.
• Transcripts and video captions: Include them for multimedia content to accommodate users with hearing impairments.   

Clear, easy to use navigation helps everyone

We have a few seconds to engage a user when they arrive at our site so make it easy to navigate to the page they need next.  Users should be able to navigate from the body content; top navigation should not be the primary navigation aid.
If you are using bespoke landing pages, make sure you use breadcrumbs so the user knows where they are in the site and can navigate further.

Make interactive buttons easy to see, easy to use with a keyboard, and with clear instructions on what to do next. A sticky top nav bar can also make navigation easier as users don’t have to keep scrolling back to the top of pages.  

How you organise your text affects readability

We in the west are taught to read left to right and our attention on a page usually follows an F pattern as shown on this heatmap.

Credit: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/

This means it is easier to read a page of text if it is aligned to the left. You’ll also notice that the F shape is formed by our tendency to pay most attention to the beginning of paragraphs at the top of the page. Space out your text, use clear, informative sub-headings and don’t make pages of text too long.  

Page length affects attention

You won’t be surprised to hear that the longer the page the more our attention wains. Many users read your site on a mobile phone so keeping things simple and easy to navigate helps everyone. In this heatmap you can see the hot spots (coloured orange, red and yellow) with the most attention, and see how attention wains (green and blue colours) towards the bottom of the page. 

 Credit: https://www.paulolyslager.com/crazy-egg-review-of-heat-map-tool/

Language and fonts are important

• Use clear language, break your text up with sub-headings, make sure there is white space breaking up the text, use clear summaries and illustrative images.
• Think about the fonts you use, too; sans Serif fonts are easier to read. 
• Complex language doesn’t help; say what you want to say, simply.
• Think about your audience, their age and their average reading age. Write for your audience using straightforward sentences. AI can be a great help if you are struggling to simplify your content. For example, despite the complex subjects covered, the reading age of the Financial Times text is 12-14 years, making it highly accessible.
• Minimise the use of CAPITALS. Having navigation links or text in CAPITALS can make it harder to read, and it is perceived as SHOUTING. We are usually better at reading text in lower case. Mixed Case Can Also Slow Us Down.  

Think about colour contrast

Colour contrast is important to people with colour blindness and people with dyslexia. Changing a plug used to be dicing with death if you were colour blind! Using pattern can help distinguish between colours. Poor contrast can make text difficult to assimilate if you have dyslexia.

Make sure anchor text and links are easy to understand

Help users to move around your site by providing links that are easy to click, change colour when clicked and clearly describe where they take you. This will help users understand where they are and avoids confusion.

Write clear Alt tags for important images, and provide transcripts for videos. Make sure the alt tags you supply for images describe what is in the picture and are relevant to the page content. This will help people relying on audio description to understand the images and should enhance their understanding of the page. However, don’t add alt text for images that are purely decorative and do not add substantive value to the page. 

If you would like help improving the accessibility of your site and its content, please get in touch. We’d be happy to help!