Today, governments across the world are working towards making their websites and e-services easily accessible to one of the most largely ignored sections of society, the blind or the visually impaired. Considering the role of governments to be easily available to all their citizens, the goal is an important one. Implementing the goal, however, calls for using an appropriate web development platform. A platform can be called appropriate for making an accessible website if:
1)The platform’s core features conform with the accessibility guidelines given by the world wide web consortium.
2)The platform offers a sufficient number of modules that adhere to accessibility principles
One such platform which satisfies the above-mentioned conditions is Drupal. It is, however, important to note that to make sure that a Drupal website renders an optimum user-experience for the visually impaired, one must abide by a few important Drupal web design guidelines for accessibility which are as follows:
1)Make The Text Of Your Website Disabled-friendly
Choose fonts that score high on readability. Examples include Verdana, Tahoma, Helvetica, and Trebuchet. Additionally, choose a font colour that contrasts well with the website background. Drupal’s official website recommends a colour contrast of 3:1 for large-sized texts and a colour contrast of 4.5:1 for regular-sized texts.
2)Make Images & Media Accessible
Use ALT text for every image. So, whenever a user hovers the cursor over an image, this text shows up. Just make sure you write an optimum and relevant image description as alternative (ALT) text for every image. For videos, make sure they display textual description and transcripts.
3)Use Accessible Contributed Modules
There is a variety of Drupal contributed modules that have been created with accessibility in mind and can be easily configured on a website by a Drupal Website Development Company. While every accessible module comes with a D7AX hashtag, some of the most popular accessibility rendering modules are:
- High contrast: The module lets site visitors to switch between an active theme and a high contrast version of the theme
- Text Size: This allows users to increase or decrease a website’s text size
- Accessible Forms: The module provides accessible forms that can be easily filled in by visually impaired users
- Readability Analyzer: The module checks to what extent the website text is readable
4)Finally, validate your website’s accessibility using free tools such as functional accessibility evaluation tool and web accessibility evaluation tool. Note the result and hire an experienced team rendering Drupal website development services to make necessary amends.
It is worthy to note that rendering an ideal user-experience to the visually impaired can not only help governments achieve their goal but also help businesses to create a wide user-base. Therefore, making note of the above-mentioned guidelines can prove useful to businesses and governments, both.
