The objective of most business websites goes beyond being informative. People are in business to earn money, and revenue generation is the ultimate goal of a commercial website. Everyone tells you to carve out a niche in your industry, but you still know that numbers matter and you want your design to attract the maximum number of visitors.

Therefore, it supervises the analyses, looks for traffic peaks and a greater scope or commitment to the content. But are you potentially excluding numerous potential customers, followers, and fans by not designing for accessibility?

Read also: How many types of websites and how to design them?

Who does an accessible design attempt to include? 

When designers talk about inclusive or accessible design, most people know how to think about permanent vision, hearing, or other disabilities about people with cognitive disabilities

However, the demography is actually much larger than this. The accessible design also means thinking about how to include people who may be temporarily disabled (for example, those with a broken limb) or people who have gradual changes inability (for example, the elderly).

To be even more inclusive, consider those who may not have the benefit of a high-speed Internet connection or who only access the web through a mobile device. Think about the situations that your website visitors may be in and design to accommodate them. Will people access your site in a stressful situation? Is your environment typically bright and noisy or is it quiet and in low light?

Think about the fact that your visitors can come from different cultural, linguistic and socio-economic environments. They may not be able to identify or relate to the images you have chosen. And yet, they still have the potential to become big customers.

Based on my experience in the web design training in Chandigarh industry, here are my top four tips to create a more accessible web design.

1. Keep layouts clean and minimal.

Cluttered layouts are not just a bad design, they can be difficult to understand and interact with. If visitors need to work too hard to determine what actions they are being asked to take or cannot quickly find the answers to their questions, they are likely to press the Back button and immediately leave their site. Along the same lines, small elements that are clustered too tightly to one another may prove difficult to interact with for those with dexterity problems.

2. Use color wisely.

When you think about the color on your website, go beyond how you see it. Keep in mind not only people with visual impairments, such as color blindness but also those who may be viewing your site in the sunlight on a mobile phone or an older user who can benefit from high-contrast elements. Offer alternatives in addition to the color that differentiate parts of your navigation from others so that visitors of all abilities can find and discover their content

3. Put metadata, alt text, and links to work.

This is another example of how designing for everyone can make search engines like Google happy. The addition of alternative text to images was initially used to feed information to screen readers and is now the best standard practice for improving SEO. Other explanatory information, such as subtitles and text transcripts for video and audio files, helps users while adding keyword-rich content to your site.

Another opportunity to improve the experience for all is to ban the use of the "read more here" hyperlink. It is more useful for users and search engines alike if you use a natural language that describes the desired action or what will happen after clicking.

4. Remember, boring and consistent good things can happen.

For those of us who work in technology or with websites every day, using the same interfaces and features can be boring, so we invent new ways to design a button or interact with the content. This can be excellent for advancing the field, but most users are looking for buttons that look and act like buttons and that navigation appears in the "traditional" way.

While cutting-edge web design certainly has its place, it could be said that it is not on a commercial website every day. Fewer technology experts have web design something static and consistent in form and function. Visitors will not give your site a chance if they have to learn a new set of rules on how to interact with their content and they will get frustrated quickly if things work differently than expected. When it comes to button design, navigation layout, and other structural elements, boring is good

Everyone wins when their design is inclusive.

Now that you have some tips on how to ensure that your web design attracts a broader demographic, the great news is that design for a wider audience really forces you to implement some of the best standard web design practices. According to usability.gov, studies have shown that accessible websites work best in search, reduce maintenance costs and enjoy a wider audience reach.

As a result, those of us who now interact with the web primarily through smartphones or voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa or Google Home benefit from both accessible design and anyone else. 

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