Yesterday, I moderated the monthly SOBCon chat with a special guest, Glenda Watson Hyatt. You can learn more about her at the “Do It Myself Blog“. The topic of conversation was accessibility, specifically via the internet. She said two things that really resonated with me and prompted this post:
- “Consider: Adults w/ disabilities spend two times as much time online as those w/o disabilities. Are they spending that time with you?” AND
- “People with disabilities are 18% of US pop with $175 billion in discretionary spending power. Can you ignore that?”
If that doesn’t get your attention to prompt thinking about accessibility, I don’t know what will.
Glenda offers a 75-Second Accessibility Challenge on her blog, you can take a look at the challenge and you can also use the 3 tips below gleaned from her post and from our chat yesterday.
- When using multi-media or visual content, add captions and transcripts. Heidi Thorne of Promo with Purpose Today and Thorne Communications indicated that she saw increased YouTube traffic after adding transcripts to her videos.
- Make hyperlink text readable…instead of hyperlinking to the word “here” use text that is meaningful. This tip is great for accessibility and it is a great general tip. I think we are all a little tired of seeing. “Please click here…”
- When you insert a hyperlink, do not force it to open in a new window. I realize that for some this is counterintuitive, myself included, but after the chat yesterday I understand how this can be problematic from an accessibility perspective. Many times when you force a new window to open, the user may not realize that is what has happened and will potentially think the link is not working and they could have difficulty navigating back to the original content.
These tips are so simple and if they can offer increased accessibility to your site or your posts, it seems a no-brainer to implement the changes.
If you are interested in learning more about accessibility, you can work directly with Glenda and you can examine the resources below:
75-Second Accessibility Challenge
Amber Cleveland's Blog 
Amber, I am proud of you for putting the quote in the alt text. Great job!
Thank you for having me as the guest for the SOBCon chat.
I try to follow rule number two & use descriptive hyperlink text as I think it makes posts flow in a more natural manner. I’ll have to incorporate the other tips. Thanks for bringing awareness to this issue!