Unlocking SEO and Revenue with Accessibility

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Lea Scudamore Director of SEO Unlocking SEO and Revenue with Accessibility

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Today’s 3 Objectives Objective #1 Change your perception to: “People are not disabled. It's bad design around them that is disabling.”

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“We need to change the perception so marketers including SEOs, developers, designers, ad and content creators start thinking accessibility is about people, not just process.”

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This needs to stop

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Let’s set the record straight.

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Accessibility is Good SEO and Dev. It has led to revenue lift in brands we’ve worked with.

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Objective #2 Help you build a data-packed business case for investing in #accessibleSEO.

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Why is it important? Web accessibility bridges issues beyond physical disability such as location, socioeconomic status, education, language, age, gender, and more.

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Accessibility focuses on people with disabilities & greatly beneﬁts people without disabilities.

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Accessible design and development are EMPOWERING!

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Ignoring the standards immediately cuts out 10% to 15% of the global population, your potential audience. In an age of growing challenges to driving traﬃc and revenue, why would you do that?

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Websites not compliant with accessibility laws: 70% of UK & US 90% of Globally

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We have designed for mobile-ﬁrst indexing and Core Web Vitals (includes accessibility), because we don't want to miss out on those potential sales... Same applies here.

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US & State Data

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What we know

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Disability and Health Data System (DHDS) National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD)

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Mobility Cognition Independent Living Hearing Vision Self-care With Disability 9% 11% 5% 6% 3% 3%

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What does accessibility have to do with SEO?

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EVERYTHING

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Objective #3 Provide you with 5 steps to accessible content and share tools, resources, and who-to-follow recommendations.

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5 Steps to Accessibility & a Better UX

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STEP 1: Digital Accessibility Statement

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#1 Accessibility Statement Let’s admit we have a problem and we are working on it. It’s the whole, “Hi my name is X and we are trying to make our site better. [email protected] if you need help.”

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Does this mean our site is a perfect model? No. We have made many improvements and we are testing. We can’t focus on one type of assistive technology or way of accomplishing tasks on the site. We are working to walk the line to serve everyone equally. Like with SEO, we’re always trying to improve our accessibility. It will never be done.

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STEP 2: Preliminary WCAG Tests & Checks

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Is everything focusable and actionable using only a keyboard?

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While testing, make note of the following ● Page elements or content areas that are skipped ● Ability to focus on and use elements like links, pop-ups, search bars, calendar widgets, etc. ● Navigation elements ○ Are you forced to go through every drop down in the navigation before getting to the page content?

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While testing, make note of the following ● Logical focus order ○ Does visual order = focus order ■ Issues can arise after adding page to drop down ■ Does focus go to a popup or modal element ASAP ● Complete an order ● Complete a Contact Us form

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Performance is hard to hit 100 if you’re collecting any data with a tag manager, analytics, console, etc. The goal after tags are added should be Mid 80s or higher.

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My favorite tip Tip: use a dev tool to turn oﬀ all images, CSS styles, etc. to ensure the site appears in the right order. Old Aimclear site

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Is the order correct?

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STEP 3: GO Mobile

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STEP 3: Going Mobile Grab your tablet or phone, it’s time to go for a walk. ● Rotate the screen. ● Review navigation elements. ● Pinch and zoom. ● Go Outside! ○ Can you see everything it in the bright sunlight?

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STEP 4: Accessible Oﬀ & On-Page Elements

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Design ● Meta titles and descriptions ● Alt text (decorative, functional, images of text, navigation complex images like graphs, groups of images, image maps; all have diﬀerent purposes) ● Proper Headlines order H1, H2, H3 ● Text links - avoid repeating (Learn more, read more)

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Food Contrast Detour

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Grey and red fonts rarely pass. They are a COLOR CONTRAST #fail. Even on Packaging. Can ANYONE read the cooking instructions? Did anyone notice them until we started talking about it?

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Stop using light grey and red fonts. They are a COLOR CONTRAST #fail. Even on Packaging. Can ANYONE read the cooking instructions? Did anyone notice them until we started talking about it?

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webaim.org webaim.org/resources/co ntrastchecker/

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Chrome Extension Hex Color Picker

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Create a Spreadsheet BRAND Font Vs. Background Colors ● Brand Hex Numbers ● Black ● White Use Contrast Checker to Fill In The AAA Scores

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Font Colors vs Background Colors

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STEP 5: Accessible Design, Audio, Video and Forms

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Design ● Fast to load ● Color contrast ● Button spacing ● Font too small ● Pinch and zoom ● It all applies to apps, docs, infographics, PDFs, packaging and Images.

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Forms ● Fields label clearly (No disappearing requirements or color-only indicators) ● No grey font spam. ● Time limits: extended or turned oﬀ ● Break long forms up ● Make sure users know when a form is completed.

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Audio ● Record high quality audio in a quiet place ● Keep background sounds like music or people talking to a minimum ● Speak clearly and slowly. ● Include describing what you are demonstrating

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Brain Break Close your eyes and *listen* to both videos Plain Audio Description

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Video ● Avoid causing seizures with ﬂashes ● Ensure speaker’s face is visible ● Consider the font family, size, and contrast between the text and the background ● Provide audio description of visual information

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Everything can be found on w3.org

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Brands big and small get it wrong

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Incorrect Errors

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https://webaim.org/techniques/javascript/alternatives#noscript

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The tools can be wrong - work with Dev

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The Global Data

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“If a person with disabilities visits and leaves your site, app, PDF, etc. because it’s a garbage UX, there is only a 12% chance they will ever return.” That’s an 88% failure.

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The World Health Organization estimates that over 1.3 billion people – 15% to 20% of the global population – experience disability. This group, along with their friends and family, has a spending power of $13 trillion. Dec 18, 2023

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Globally Giftabled says: There are 2 billion people with disabilities (PWD), an emerging market the size of China. Source: giftabled.org/what-is-accessibility/

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Globally Add the friends and family ● 2.3 billion potential consumers who act on their emotional connection to a PWD. Source: giftabled.org/what-is-accessibility/

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Globally Totalled ● Constitutes of 37.5% of the world population. Out of that population, 1.75 billion people suﬀer a disability that concerns vision. Source: giftabled.org/what-is-accessibility/

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2018: In the U.S. PWD = 64 Million (1 in 4)

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In 2021 it grew by 16 Million to 80.3 Million ● 10.8% of Americans have cognitive difficulties ● 5.6% have hearing difficulties ● 4.6% have vision difficulties

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American Institutes for Research “People with disabilities (by themselves) in the U.S. alone control approximately $645 billion in disposable income—the after-tax dollars for basic necessities such as housing, food, and clothing. In the marketplace, PWD—as well as their families, friends, and advocates—wield considerable spending power.”

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$78.1B $82.5B $46.4B $39.3B $30.9B $23.2B Functional disability types control Billions Billions per functional disability types

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Show of hands… How many of you track the revenue left in abandoned shopping carts?

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Cart Abandonment in the US ● According to Baymard Institute, 69.57% of desktop online shopping carts are abandoned. ● $18 Billion in yearly sales revenue, according to Forrester research.

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Cart Abandonment Stats by Industry & Product - Bolt.com Source: https://www.bolt.com/thinkshop/shopping-cart-abandonment-statistics-by-industry-trends-benchmarks

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Sources: CreditDonkey, Dynamic Yield Sources: SaleCycle

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Sources: EYStudios, Baymard, Econsultancy

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That was a lot of data Wrapping up with a story

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“I use my expertise to make the web more accessible for everyone” Lea Scudamore Director of SEO at Aimclear

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Digital Accessibility is about People

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We don’t think about web accessibility until we need it or someone we care for needs better accessibility; like clearer fonts, bigger buttons, closed captioning, etc.

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This shouldn’t be a thing.

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Search terms that shouldn’t be search terms Facebook + horizontal ● 873 keywords/ 145,000 Global Search Volume (GSV) Snapchat + horizontal ● 87 kws / 160 GSV Instagram ● 464 kws /3,620 GSV Twitter + horizontal ● 78 kws / 80 GSV Tiktok + horizontal ● 2 kws / 70 GSV = 1,504 Keywords = 148,930 Searches People Each Month

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What do I do NEXT?

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#2 Build your case Creating accessible content is good for disabled people but greatly benefits EVERYONE.

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#3 Accessibility = Good Dev and SEO Accessibility has EVERYTHING to do with all content from Ads, to SEO to DEV to the platform it’s built on to the alt text on the images.

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#4 Brands Big and Small WE KNOW brands big and small are failing at disability inclusion and every brand is responsible for ﬁxing this.

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#5 Do the Right Thing Accessibility is NOT a checklist it’s about doing the right thing.

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THANK YOU Lea Scudamore [email protected] www.aimclear.com

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Resources

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I love this story

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Resources: Who-to-Follows @w3c @WeArePurple @PurpleTuesday

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Resources: Tools/Extensions ● WCAG Color Contrast ● Color-pair Contrast Test ● Accessibilityinsights.io ● WeArePurple.org.uk/ ● Accessibility Insights for Web ● WAVE Evaluation Tool - Chrome Extension ● Web Developer - Chrome Extension