10 tips to make your WordPress site more accessible

CMS is the buzzword in internet marketing today. It’s the most credible way of reaching out to the audience. While many CMS (content marketing systems) have come up today, WordPress does hold a special and topmost position in the affairs. A unique open source platform, WordPress allows a variety of CMS elements to take your business into the demographics. While the usual options do cater to maximum accessibility and flexibility of WordPress content, you can always do more. A little bit of efforts and your site can rise above competition.
 
Accessibility also means that your business platform should allow different varieties of users. This includes responsive designing for mobile users, creating a platform sited for people with motor disabilities, search engine robots and much more. Here are some proven ways to do more with your WordPress site.
 
1. Using Headings
 
Headings offer a semantic structure to websites. This doesn’t just help the end user understand the content more effectively but also allows search engine robots to pick up the important keywords to your site. Most webmasters use h1 tag for main heading/title. Using h2, h3, etc is also recommended.
 
2. Accessibility plugins
 
There are several plugins offered by WordPress that work towards increasing the accessibility of your website. These plugins will take care of the common design and format issues associated with content accessibility.
 
3. Links
 
Links could be a great way to defining search engine results. Links could be anything – PDF manuals for a product, email addresses, websites, registrations and many more. It is advisable to have your links accompanied by an image and an alt-text. The title attribute of the link should also provide supplementary information.
 
4. Consistent design
 
Make sure that the moment you come up with a WordPress site, you are going to stick to it for a lifetime. Changing the structure and layout of your site at any point of time will affect the accessibility it has been enjoying.
 
5. Underlining
 
Underlining texts makes it stand out among other content. It also helps people suffering from color blindness. An underlined text has enough reasons to be hyperlinked than a slightly dull or colored text.
 
6. Focus on the links
 
Whenever you put in links (“Click Here”, “Read More”, “Buy”, etc), make sure they stand out. They could be underlined, bold, have different colors or can come in a differently colored background.
 
7. Validation
 
While WordPress sites don’t require too much of a coding to be deployed, you should always ensure that the automatically generated coding is CSS and W3C HTML validated. This increases compatibility and resolves any design issues.
 
8. Add transcriptions
 
Adding audio and video transcription in your website increases its chances to be seen. This is in case the end user is unable to play the audio/video file. The content can be provided using transcriptions.
 
9. Adding captions
 
Adding captions to images and videos also acts like transcriptions. Webmaster may use Media Access generator for this purpose.
 
10. Proper HTML structuring
 
Proper use of HTML syntax will make websites more prepared and understandable. Metadata and alternative text for images could also be element that drives in traffic.
 
A lot also depends upon the theme you are using for your website. A well accessible site will provide the best returns to the investment.