It's Never Too Late to Make Your Site Accessible

Even though you may be done developing your site, you can still make it accessible for persons with disabilities. It is true that web accessibility experts recommend implementing accessibility at the initial stages of web development.

However, there may be instances when you just recently heard of web accessibility after you have completed your site. Also, you may have heard of web accessibility, but have set it aside for a while, and now you have seen its importance.

In any event, through a set of methods, you will find that it is still possible to make a completed site accessible.

How to Implement Accessibility in a Finished Website

Examine Your Web Development Tools

Take a look at the web authoring applications you have used when making your site. This will help you assess how much work needs to be done. Check if your CMS allows you to make changes related to accessibility. If you used third-party components, there is a chance that you would have to rewrite or replace them, if they cannot produce accessible materials. In case of a CMS, sometimes all you need to do is to use a different template to greatly improve accessibility.

Check Your Source Code

Next, if you are able to access it directly, focus on the codes of your site’s pages. Familiarize yourself with the tags you used for each block of text. For the next step, you can use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to help you make changes.

Here are a few examples of the procedures you can do in this task: Place heading tags in the appropriate text if you haven’t done so. If you have tables in your pages, make sure you place the table heading tag on the column headers. Place a suitable alt text in each image in your pages. While these are the very very basics, just to these things will greatly improve your site's accessibility.

Performing Validation

Validation ensures that the codes in your page are free from errors. This step is important because a site that has little or no errors has a good chance of becoming accessible. In the previous task, you made sure that you used the right tags. Now, you would see to it that those tags are opened and closed properly. There are a lot of online HTML validators that can aid you in finding and correcting errors in your site’s pages. Here, you can read about using validators. This will not only help you with accessibility, but browser compatibility as well.

Seeking Help from Accessibility Experts

Accessibility experts can take a look at your site and develop a systematic set of steps to correct the accessibility issues within it. Depending on your agreement, the accessibility expert can even perform the corrections for you. No false promises here, maybe an expert will determine that there's a lot to do and it's not easy. But you never know, maybe it only takes a couple of great ideas and quick fixes to make your site accessible to people with disabilities.

Conclusion

Making a finished site accessible may involve much time and resources. This is true especially if you have a large website. But once you have done the basic tasks, maintaining its accessibility would be relatively easier. Just don't forget, when you add new content that has to be accessible too, so once you made your site accessible, make sure it stays that way.