Figuring out whether a WordPress site is actually accessible is harder than it looks. This isn't because the rules are mysterious, but because most teams encounter the same two problems early on.
First, accessibility often falls into unfamiliar territory. You might recognize the term “ADA compliance,” but struggle to identify which issues are truly critical on a live site. Second, even when problems are evident, knowing how to resolve them without compromising design, functionality, or existing workflows is rarely straightforward.
This widespread confusion is precisely why accessibility problems tend to persist. Websites undergo scans, minor warnings surface, a plugin gets installed, and there's a general hope that these steps suffice. However, this is frequently not the case.
Reviews become more rigorous, complaints increase, and questions about accessibility only gain prominence when significant financial or reputational stakes are involved.
In this post, we will cover the following topics:
- What it means for your website to achieve ADA compliance.
- The specific components of your website that require compliance.
- Why relying on plugins is not the optimal solution.
- Effective strategies to ensure your site's ongoing compliance.
Note: Our team possesses over a decade of experience in addressing accessibility issues and has successfully protected hundreds of businesses from accessibility lawsuits. If you are interested in identifying the accessibility errors present on your WordPress website, we invite you to take our Free Accessibility Audit. Alternatively, if you prefer a professional evaluation by one of our WordPress specialists, you can schedule your free consultation.
What Does It Mean for Your Website to Be ADA Compliant?
An ADA-compliant website ensures that individuals with disabilities can effectively navigate and interact with your site. For example, if a visitor has impaired vision, your website must provide accommodations such as adjustable fonts, customizable colors, and compatibility with screen readers.
When an organization commits to making its website compliant, it not only enhances functionality and makes the site more dynamic for a diverse user base but also positively impacts its search engine optimization (SEO).
During your research on accessibility, you may have frequently encountered the term WCAG. WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and is structured around four core principles:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
Ensuring your website adheres to these guidelines not only champions these principles but also safeguards your organization from potential litigation.
What Components of Your Website Need To Be Compliant?
Identifying the accessibility issues on your WordPress website might seem straightforward, often focusing on common disabilities like vision and hearing impairments. However, it's crucial to also consider less frequently discussed conditions, such as neurodevelopmental disorders like seizures and ADHD.
Website compliance is a nuanced and complex process. If not executed thoroughly, you risk overlooking critical errors, which can leave your organization vulnerable to legal challenges.
Despite the intricacies of accessibility, several key components must be addressed to advance towards full website accessibility.
1. Image ALT Text
Alt tags are essential for providing accurate descriptions of images to visitors with vision impairments. These descriptions are read aloud by screen readers, making it critical to write precise and informative text for each image.
WordPress includes a dedicated section for inputting your ALT tags. Implementing these tags can also contribute to improved SEO performance.
While adding alt text seems like a simple task, it can become a significant issue if you have thousands of images across your website lacking proper ALT descriptions.
2. Optimized Content and Colors
Optimizing your website content is vital for individuals with visual difficulties. This means allowing them to adjust font sizes to their readable preference and to highlight specific words for better comprehension.
For users who experience seizures, reducing the brightness of colors and offering adjustable color contrast can significantly improve their user experience and accommodate their needs.
3. Screen Readers
Screen readers function by vocalizing the content of a webpage, enabling visitors to navigate your site effectively. It's not enough for your content to be merely well-formatted in terms of sentence structure; elements like forms and headings are equally important.
Two of the most widely used screen readers include:
- JAWS (Job Access with Speech)
- NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access)
Properly structured content allows screen readers to move through your information in an organized manner, ensuring a logical and understandable experience for the visitor.
4. Descriptive Links
When linking to an external website, the link text should be descriptive and clearly inform visitors where clicking it will lead. Using generic phrases like “click here” might be acceptable for sighted users who can infer context, but it poses a barrier for visually impaired users.
For individuals who cannot see the visual context, external links must provide more informative text. For instance:
- Avoid saying: “Click here to visit our blog article about accessibility.”
- Instead, consider: “To learn more about how to make a website more accessible, read our accessibility blog post.”
These examples represent just a few of the issues that can diminish your site's accessibility and expose you to legal risks. Achieving full compliance requires addressing many more accessibility features beyond these points.
Why Plugins Aren’t the Solution for Web Accessibility
If you begin exploring accessibility solutions for WordPress, plugins will inevitably come into view. Numerous plugins exist, with most promising a quicker, simpler route to ADA compliance. The common pitch is: install, activate, and you're done.
However, the fundamental problem is that accessibility simply does not operate in this simplistic manner.
Plugins can highlight issues, and some may assist with minor corrections. Yet, they lack the capacity to understand the actual functionality of your site. They have no insight into why a form behaves in a specific way, how a custom menu was constructed, or what might break when JavaScript updates dynamically.
Their operation is superficial, failing to address the foundational level of your website.
There's also the pervasive theme problem. Many accessibility plugins only function as intended with particular WordPress themes. If your theme wasn't developed with accessibility in mind, a plugin cannot miraculously rectify this deficiency. In some instances, it may not run correctly at all.
In other cases, installing a plugin can create conflicts that introduce new problems rather than resolving existing ones. More crucially, plugins do not evaluate usability.
They don't simulate tabbing through your site, attempting to complete checkout processes without a mouse, or listening to how a screen reader interprets your headings, buttons, or error messages. Plugins can serve as a supplementary tool, but they are not a comprehensive solution for accessibility.
How to Actually Make a WordPress Site Accessible
A thorough accessibility review typically commences with an automated scan to detect obvious technical issues. This initial pass is valuable, but the core work begins when specialists manually navigate the site, using only a keyboard and genuine assistive technologies, to identify where users genuinely encounter obstacles.
This meticulous process uncovers problems that plugins simply cannot detect. These include focus disappearing unexpectedly, forms failing to announce errors, menus that appear visually correct but collapse for screen reader users, and PDFs that, while never intended to be interactive, are now crucial for users.
Once these issues are identified, accessibility professionals collaborate directly with developers to implement fixes within the code, theme, and the content itself. This comprehensive approach is what truly moves a WordPress site towards conformance with WCAG Level AA in a sustainable manner.
Start Towards The Path of Accessibility for Your WordPress Website
In summary, your WordPress website could be facing hundreds of potential accessibility issues. While plugins and certain widgets can serve as accessibility evaluation tools to address some of these problems, they cannot resolve all of them nor fully safeguard your organization from legal action.
The most effective way to ensure maximum protection for your website is through a comprehensive manual audit.
ADA Compliance Pros specializes in WordPress ADA compliance, having partnered with numerous website owners to facilitate effective remediation and provide protection against lawsuits. If you wish to discover the errors present on your WordPress website, we encourage you to take our Free Accessibility Audit and begin your journey toward an accessible website.