# Is Your Site Accessible to the Blind?



## parodi (Mar 15, 2010)

What is there to painting, really? Anybody can do it. You open up the cans at 8 AM and start slapping it on the walls, right?
Now that I have your attention with that ridiculous opening I turn to websites. Anybody can do them, right?

Just like there are DIY customers who happened to luck out and not have any problems with their "noncritical painting situation" where they didn't powerwash, didn't prime, painted in direct sun or when temps dipped below 45 degrees there are DIY website people who somehow landed on third base and think there is really nothing to doing a website. But as in painting... every situation with web site design is different.

On the flip side of that, more than a few DIY website people will be of the opinion that since their website doesn't work for drumming up business that "websites don't work." ("We tried painting the house but the paint peeled so we are siding next spring.")

One thing that DIY website people usually have never heard of is "website accessibility." Is it important? It certainly can be depending on your market and if you want to rank well where there is competition. Google gives your site points for being navigable to the blind, color blind or sight impaired people. 

Google is populated by 20 and 30 Somethings who are demographically PC and are itching to dump your site beause you are ignoring handicapped people. I'm not kidding. (As a side note I actually had a painter's site rise in google after I put in "100% non-smoking crew.")

If you have done your website yourself and did not take in accessibility as a design factor you may have lucked out, for now. If there are no other painters' sites in your area that have accessibility features it may currently be OK in your geo location. But if two or three new painters' handicapped accessible sites come up on google in your market this year you just may find yourself at the bottom or off Google Page One because the bots don't like it or you.

Personally I prefer to design simple sites without bells and whistles which makes it easier to code in accessibility from the start. Step One is to put in the alt tags which should accompany EVERY graphic on your site. Alt tags have the text for a machine reader which says,"PHOTO OF PAINTED HOUSE."

Here's another thing you can add to the list of many things that DIY website designers are unaware of: Alt tags are also SEO keyword opportunities (within reason). So it is perfectly googlelegal to put in "PHOTO OF PAINTED HOUSE DONE BY JBC PAINTING IN MIDDLETOWN NY"

But some DIY sites that are template sites are accessiblity nightmares because they have "cool features" that look great to the sighted but leave the impaired at a deadend. For instance there are drop downs or pop ups that don't respond to keyboard commands. Blind people don't use the mouse. 

Have you ever tried to navigate your site with eyes closed using a reader? I didn't think so. Google Chrome has a good reader option.

Firefox has a good accessibilty plug-in which will validate your site. Be aware that when you use it your site is going to have all sorts of violations, fails and warnings. (BTW I'm not saying your site needs to be accessibly perfect--- it just needs to look like you are at least trying to the googlebots.)

For instance, I like email push-buttons which is a W3C violation since you are supposed to have for the blind text links that read the link out loud. But I hate the "look" of that so blind people lose one point there. Sorry blind folks. But if I was having a problem getting a web site customer up the google page it is good thing to know about as an option and I might lose the button and put in the readable hypertext link.

Incredibly, I see people who spent a lot of money on their site but it is not at all accessible. I guess it shouldn't surprise me since so many high priced sites have little to no SEO too.


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)

Interesting topic Jim. I have been playing around on my school site with a reader. I think we may start to see more options, I know there are several apps to read websites for IPads.


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## WarlinePainting (May 22, 2011)

Honestly, this is so low on my list of priorities when it comes to my website.

Isn't my website budget better spent on making my website accessible and easy to read for say...smart phones and tablets?


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## ProWallGuy (Apr 7, 2007)

My last site was set up for the sight impaired. I think Jim is showing how making your site accessible to impaired people just gives you extra bonus ways to add SEO to your site, and not necessarily looking for those impaired people to be clients. Please correct me if I'm wrong Jim.


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## WarlinePainting (May 22, 2011)

I don't see the connection (no pun intended)


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## SouthFloridaPainter (Jan 27, 2011)

WarlinePainting said:


> I don't see the connection (no pun intended)



He's saying to just fake it, and make yourself look good in the eyes of the bots.


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## Rcon (Nov 19, 2009)

parodi said:


> Incredibly, I see people who spent a lot of money on their site but it is not at all accessible. I guess it shouldn't surprise me since so many high priced sites have little to no SEO too.


Sorry, but I find no reason for a painting website to be accessible to blind people. What do they care about colour - they can't see it. 

SEO, sure that's important, also pretty simple for anyone who knows the first thing about HTML and link structure. But accessibility - for a painting website?


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## SouthFloridaPainter (Jan 27, 2011)

Rcon said:


> Sorry, but I find no reason for a painting website to be accessible to blind people. What do they care about colour - they can't see it........


He's trying to tell you to do it for the search engines, and not really the visitors to your site.

Let me explain.

A search engine sends "bots" to crawl around your site and then ranks it based on it findings. You get "ranking points" on a ton of things. One of those things is to see how accessible it is for for the blind. So if the "bot" sees that you did so, then you get a point for that. It then continues to rank on a whole bunch of other things. It then adds up all the points, and ranks your site accordingly.

So in other words the OP is saying to make your website more accessible to the blind in order to grab that extra point.


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## parodi (Mar 15, 2010)

SouthFloridaPainter said:


> He's trying to tell you to do it for the search engines, and not really the visitors to your site.
> 
> Let me explain.
> 
> ...


Bingo.


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