Yesterday evening, I gave a talk at my local WordPress Meetup Group about making WordPress Websites more Accessible (Section 508 compliant) in terms of setup and content.
Here’s the slide deck and resources page I complied for the talk.
One fits All – Slide deck
Participants had some great questions and also suggested some additional resources, which are now also included on the Resources page.
Check out the fully accessible Oz video player: http://www.accessibilityoz.com/ozplayer/
The WordCamp Seattle 2015: Experienced Edition was terrific.
So much information and so many excellent speakers packed into one short day. See schedule
Suffice it to say, I learned a great deal which will continue to inform my behind-the-scenes development work on WordPress sites and got to chat with longstanding leaders in the WordPress community.
What I want to share about it in this post is information that most immediately affects clients with a view towards future-proofing their websites.
Search engines will begin to penalize sites which are not mobile-friendly and favor those which are (two components to this: is it responsive, and does it have a good sitemap?) starting on April 21. Here’s what Google says.
Want to see if your site is mobile-friendly? check here
Here’s what success looks like:
Long a best practice, accessibility (also known as 508 compliance) is becoming increasingly important in defining a solid build.
This talk really covered the bases in terms of making sure websites are equipped to get their information to the hearing and visually impaired – from supplying information to screen readers and other devices to making sure your text size can be enlarged, to designing for colorblindness.
Basically, whatever helps your website to communicate its content with people, helps it to communicate with search engines. Making sure your site is accessible is more than an ADA requirement: in today’s internet landscape, it is a necessity.
Here are some tools to help you check your site:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/Overview.html
http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php
Getting a site which is built with mobile-friendliness and accessibility as primary concerns sets your site up for future success.
Have a great day.