You may already use automation to improve the user experience for prospects and customers visiting your website, but is it enough? Your insurance website should provide the best user experience — regardless of a visitor’s limitations or disabilities.
Creating a user experience that addresses a broad range of needs not only reflects well on your brand — it’s the law. One in four adults in the United States has a disability. Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities have the legal right to reasonable access to all areas of public life, including the Internet.
The ADA’s guidelines, WCAG 2.1, ensure website accessibility for every visitor. When you make your website content accessible following ADA guidelines, you’re doing more than providing an important service — you’re driving traffic. A better user experience means lower bounce rates, quicker page load times, and increased time on site, which are critical SEO factors.
How to Improve Website Accessibility: WCAG 2.1
WCAG 2.1 is a worldwide standard for providing accessible web content, focusing on people with disabilities. The guidelines define web content as text, images, sounds, and script, and the presentation of that content. Improving website accessibility to comply with WCAG 2.1 requirements means that content must be:
- Perceivable
Information and user cues must be presented in a way that all users can recognize and understand. Providing text alternatives to non-text content, alternatives for video and audio media, and making content easier to see and hear are all ways to increase perception.
- Operable
Website accessibility must include ways to interact for all visitors. From making all functions available using a keyboard to providing users sufficient time to absorb the content, a site’s operation must meet a range of needs.
- Understandable
Text content must be readable and understandable. Web pages must operate in predictable ways, and websites should assist readers in avoiding and correcting mistakes, like receiving an error message and describing the error in text format.
- Robust
Content must be robust to be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of website users. As technologies and users’ needs and behaviors evolve, the content should remain accessible.
From implementing accessibility elements to identifying and correcting accessibility issues, using website accessibility software can make compliance faster and easier.
5 Ways to Improve Your Insurance Website Accessibility
While your website is already compliant in some aspects, it’s critical to ensure that your site is fully compliant for legal and SEO purposes. Here are 5 ways you can provide the best online experience for all your website visitors:
- Use “Alt Tags” for Images
With the popularity of website images, it’s important to make graphic-based content accessible. Start by ensuring all your website images have a meaningful alt tag. For example, when creating your agency’s logo, don’t use a default alt tag like “logo.” Instead, use detailed tags that include your company’s name and other content like a slogan. - Provide Audio Descriptions for Videos
Video can be a powerful medium for all viewers as long as you make it accessible. Provide an audio description and a text description, like closed captions, to meet the needs of visually and auditorily challenged viewers. - Use Text Descriptions for Hyperlinks
Content using “click here” and other button text must include more descriptive text to show a user that they should click a specific button. WCAG 2.1 compliance requires text and graphic hyperlinks to include a text description using title attributes. - Use Forms That are Accessible to All
Chances are, your insurance website uses many forms, like “contact us” forms. To meet the needs of those with visual disabilities, use HTML tags to describe the form controls, including:- Buttons
- Checkboxes
- Text fields
- Drop-down lists
If you use the default settings in a drop-down list, provide a description for each piece of information being requested.
- Provide a Skip Navigation Link
An accessible website should have user-friendly navigation for easily finding other pages other than the homepage. Provide a “skip navigation” link for visitors using screen readers. This helps visitors using screen readers to avoid listening to a menu of links each time they land on another page.
If you incorporate the 5 web accessibility elements above, you are well on your way to being WCAG 2.1 compliant. When your site is compliant, you can provide the best user experience and improve your website’s ranking via Google’s algorithms at the same time.
The technical aspects of WCAG 2.1 and ADA compliance can make it difficult to know how to improve website accessibility for your prospects and customers. Agency Revolution has got you covered. Our fully automated web accessibility tool, Accessibility Lock™, makes sure every website visitor gets the experience they want.