A Practical Guide to Website Accessibility for Fitness Studio Owners
As a fitness instructor, you know offering accessible options to exercises is important—it’s a core competency. But it’s easy to overlook things that allow our website to be accessible.
If you did a quick Google search right now, you could easily find a wealth of information about how you can create an accessible website—it’s honestly a bit overwhelming and often contradictory. While some of the information may seem technically difficult, other pieces of what is needed are pretty logical.
The truth is the definition of website accessibility is always evolving.
As technology is always moving forward, new opportunities to make our content more accessible continue to emerge.
What does it mean to ensure you have an accessible website? And what are some best practices you can leverage to ensure your website accessibility is where it should be?
Let’s take a look.
What is website accessibility?
According to a Pew Research Center report in 2021, 75% of Americans with disabilities use the internet daily. However, an estimated 90% of websites are inaccessible to people who rely on assistive technology.
The most common type of website accessibility we usually hear about is the use of screen readers. In a screen reader user survey conducted by WebAIM, it was found that nearly 100% of screen reader users do so due to blindness, low vision or some level of visual impairment.
If you’re unfamiliar with screen readers, they’re software that enables people experiencing visual impairments to use their computers effectively. Using a standard keyboard, users interact with their computers.
Unlike speech-to-text applications, screen readers can do much more than just read the text aloud. Some screen readers, like JAWS, have the ability to convert the text to Braille and also allow the reader to jump around the screen. Screen readers use keystrokes to move the user through the content.
The big picture here is that we must be considerate and complete regarding the information we present online. Website accessibility is a process — not a check-the-box situation. Ensuring appropriate website accessibility should be an ongoing consideration, and it’s not something you can just flip a switch and magically have done.
Strong website accessibility comes down to good design principles and attention to detail.
With that in mind, there are several accessibility considerations that anyone can do, whether you’re working with a professional designer or DIYing your website.
Website accessibility best practices
While this list I will share isn’t exhaustive, it’s a great place to get started. We’ll look at five key areas you can focus on to improve your website accessibility.
#1. Images
Add alt text descriptions to your images. If you’re working in Squarespace and aren’t sure how to do that, check out this article.
Don’t use graphics with text. Screen readers can’t read words that are in pictures so you’ll want to ensure the text they need is typed on the website, not just in a picture.
#2. Text
Ensure your text has good contrast with the background it’s on. Your text should be easy to read for everyone—this includes words over photos as well as colored backgrounds.
Maintain an organized headline structure. You should have one H1 heading on the page, followed by logical H2 and H3 headlines that help people navigate the page.
#3. Video and Audio
Don’t auto-play video or audio. Not only can autoplay conflict with screen readers, but it can also be triggering for people who suffer from seizures and be distracting or overwhelming for people with challenges related to their cognitive abilities.
Add captions to videos. Captions are critical for people who are hearing impaired.
Offer transcripts. Have this alternative to video and audio files available.
Ensure no animations or other content blinks or flashes fast. Like autoplay, this can be triggering for users with neurological issues.
#4. Page Titles
Ensure your page titles are clear and descriptive. Page titles are key for situational awareness while navigating your site. You can find out how to do that on Squarespace right here.
Bonus: Page titles are also super important for SEO, so spending time to craft logical, descriptive page titles that use search keywords is a win-win!
#5. Link Formatting
Use descriptive link text. For example, if you have a website button that leads people to purchase your introductory offer, it should say “Get started with 30 days for $30” instead of “Click Here”.
Use underlines to distinguish links alone or in addition to color.
As I mentioned earlier, these are just some of the things we can work on with our website accessibility, but these are far and above the easiest for us to not only control but also improve.
To learn more about improving your website accessibility, have a look at this checklist.
What about website accessibility tools?
I absolutely understand that it might be tempting to see if you can find a tool that will take care of all of this, but at this time I don’t recommend them. Here’s why…
Not only are these expensive for most small businesses' budgets, but there’s also the issue of redundant technology. Since website accessibility needs and expectations are always evolving, the tool you buy to take care of things for you may get outdated much quicker than expected. The last thing you want is to end up using a tool that is more harmful than helpful!
In short, these tools are not a great idea and may result in you making your website accessibility worse. Many of these tools aren’t ADA-compliant, which can land people in hot water.
If you take a quick look at this factsheet, you’ll see just how much people don’t endorse these tools.
From the factsheet:
“The ineffectiveness of overlays is something that has broad agreement among accessibility practitioners, per the WebAIM Survey of Web Accessibility Practitioners, which found: A strong majority (67%) of respondents rate these tools as not at all or not very effective. Respondents with disabilities were even less favorable with 72% rating them not at all or not very effective, and only 2.4% rating them as very effective.”
In another article by Kris Rivenburgh, author of The ADA Book on Medium, you can see countless examples of why vendors selling accessibility overlay tools are not delivering on their promises. Rivenburgh explains that vendors are selling an illusion of website accessibility and that manually identifying and remediating accessibility issues will always be the best approach.
Bottom line: website accessibility isn’t the place to try and take a shortcut.
Getting your website accessibility handled, correctly
As much as I’d love to tell you there’s a quick fix to ensure website accessibility, there isn’t. There’s no easy answer to making your small business website 100% ADA-compliant. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do our best.
That starts with adhering to good design principles and being considerate of how we display content. It also means continuing to learn and improve as we go.
The good news is that as big tech companies like Squarespace, WordPress, and Wix improve the system accessibility defaults on their platforms, it will be easier for small businesses to improve collectively.
Now, after reading all this, you may be wondering where to start with getting your website accessibility up to par. And that’s a fair question! There’s no magic website accessibility switch you can flip and have it all handled, but there are steps you can take.
First of all, don’t panic! You may be looking at a website you had built a few years ago and wondering why all of this isn’t already done. As I’ve mentioned before, accessibility guidelines are always improving and evolving. What was standard three years ago may not cut it in 2023, and that’s not your previous designers' (or anyone else’s!) fault.
If your website is over a couple of years old, it may be time for a website redesign, where the appropriate website accessibility can be cared for along with updates to your platform technology. When I work with clients on website redesigns, we go through everything I outlined above and more before launch.
If you’re someone who’s flying solo and takes care of your own website updates on Squarespace, this article has some great tips to help you get started.
If you need assistance with website accessibility and are thinking about a possible redesign, we can help! You can find out more about our website design services right here, or book a consult call so we can chat about your needs.
