Put the user at the forefront through accessibility

Sara says: “It’s imperative that you put the user at the forefront of any SEO strategy.

To do this effectively, you need to follow web accessibility best practices and have a clear understanding of what accessibility truly means.”

How would you define accessibility?

“Accessibility ensures that all users, regardless of their physical, sensory, or cognitive abilities can navigate and interact with a product or service.

This goes beyond compliance because it’s about inclusivity and respect for all users. Accessibility also goes beyond including alt text in images for visual impairments because it includes and addresses a wide range of needs and how to tackle them.

It’s important that we don’t confuse the words disability and accessibility because a person can have a disability, but if the environment is adapted to their needs, then it becomes accessible.”

How would you summarise the European Accessibility Act and what does it mean for SEOs?

“The European Accessibility Act is a directive of the European Union and it’s going to apply to all digital products and services, both public and private. Non-compliance with this act can lead to significant fines and legal repercussions. It could be similar to those that we’ve seen with GDPR violations.

We still don’t know exactly what they are going to take into account when judging whether or not our sites are truly accessible, but chances are the first resource they’re going to look at is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which are the international standards for accessible web content.

They provide a framework for making websites perceptible, operable, understandable, and robust for all users. They have a very thorough list of principles. There are different levels of compliance that you can achieve in these guidelines. Achieving at least an AA level (the second-highest level) is recommended for most businesses. If you achieve that level, you are compliant.”

What would you say to a business that’s outside the European Union?

“Just because it doesn’t apply to you doesn’t mean that there aren’t similar guidelines in your country or region. Maybe there are, or maybe it’s just a matter of time. It’s still important to take all these guidelines into account because the online experience that you provide with your product or service should be the same for everybody. Everybody should be able to interact with your product or service in the same way.

We’re not just talking about visual impairments and alt text; it goes beyond that. There are many things to start looking at identifying because there are a wide variety of disabilities, including cognitive disabilities. You need to provide clear and simple content to help people with any kind of cognitive challenge, or differing level of literacy, understand and navigate your website more easily.

If you have a website in a very technical niche, and you have terminology that is difficult to understand, you should always provide brief definitions and links to resources that expand on the information.

For users with auditory disabilities, if you have a video, you need to provide transcripts and captions so that users who have difficulties listening can watch those videos as well.

There are also temporary and situational disabilities, which we are often not aware of. For example, a parent holding a baby may need to use voice commands and someone in a noisy environment cannot listen to a video so they may need captions to be able to follow it. Someone on holiday in a foreign country may struggle to communicate with locals – that’s a situational impairment. All the support that you provide to those users will make their experience more accessible.

Even if your business is based outside the European Union, if you want to do business in the EU and serve customers there, you need to be aware of the European Accessibility Act.

In the European Union alone, there are already 101 million people with disabilities. That’s a lot of users. When you design and do SEO for accessibility (SEO and UX go hand in hand here, so it’s important to take both into account), you’ll be helping your business reach a larger market while improving your brand reputation and customer loyalty.

You will make your product or service more available to more people. In the end, we also have to take into account the fact that search engines favour accessible websites. Beyond compliance and legislation, the overall impact is positive in terms of both the business and performance.”

The UK government recommends you should aim to write text for a maximum reading age of 9 to make sure it is accessible to everyone. Is that standard the same everywhere?

“That’s a good standard. Every country or region could have their own legislation and guidelines but that’s a good baseline. You should never make assumptions about what your user knows.

I am an SEO and, if I’m using a tool or a new resource, I may need a walkthrough or additional links to understand what I’m using. However, when I’m performing an audit in Sitebulb, for example, everything that the tool marks will include links to definitions explaining what that is and why it is important. That is very useful for anyone who has a different level of knowledge in SEO.

They might not be very technical, they might not be very familiar with these things, but they have these resources at hand to make sure that they can understand the audit and report those issues to their clients.”

Could you speak more about the significance of temporary disabilities and situational impairments?

“If you break your arm, that’s temporary. While your arm is healing, being able to use a website with voice commands and navigate using only the keyboard and not the mouse becomes essential. If you are in an environment where people are speaking a language that you cannot speak, you have a temporary situational disability.

This way of classifying disabilities comes from the Microsoft Inclusive Design methodology. You can find details about it on their website, and they classify disabilities into 3 groups: permanent, temporary, and situational. Inside of each group, you have all the disabilities.”

Is using inclusive language an important part of accessibility as well?

“Yes, absolutely. The language, the design, and the layout of the website are all important. You want to use plain language to accommodate users with varying literacy levels and varying levels of expertise. Avoid jargon and complex terms or, if you need to use them, define them.

This is important for users with different levels of expertise but also, using very advanced vocabulary can present a challenge for non-native speakers, so that could be a cognitive limitation as well.

You also want to ensure high contrast between text and backgrounds, and provide alt text. Accessibility is not just about alt text, but that doesn’t mean that alt text is not a big part of it. Apart from these guidelines, there are also different tools that you can use and different ways to check as well.”

How would you persuade someone that focusing on accessibility is one of the most important things to be doing right now?

“It’s not just a legal and ethical obligation; it’s a smart business strategy. When you make your website accessible, you’re creating a better user experience for all visitors, you’re increasing your reach, and you’re enhancing your brand’s reputation.

We need to create inclusive spaces where everyone can access and interact with digital content easily and effectively, regardless of their abilities. Sometimes, when you show a stakeholder these long guideline documents, they are not going to listen. The good thing is that we have so many tools that we can use to audit our websites.

These tools include WAVE (which is great for accessibility checking), Lighthouse, and even Sitebulb. They also have an accessibility audit that’s quite good. Firefox has an accessibility section in their DevTools. There could be even more tools coming with this European law enforcement, but we already have quite a few resources.”

How do you measure the business benefits of improving accessibility?

“You can look at different metrics: time on page, reduced bounce rates, conversion rates, etc. You will be able to reach more users, so you should see an improvement in these metrics, as well as better rankings. Search engines will see that you are covering all these aspects, so your rankings should already improve.

You should also look into any qualitative data, such as surveys that you provide to users where they can give you feedback. That would be a good indicator. If you want to, you could go more granular. You could ask specific questions in those surveys to get more detailed feedback.

Also, you can look at your Net Promoter Score, which measures the level of customer satisfaction and loyalty and indicates whether users are more likely to recommend the site to others. Through that, you would see that those accessibility entitlements are benefiting your users because they’re happy with their experience.

It’s also important to test with real users as well. You need to test different devices and browsers to make sure that everything is placed correctly and is accessible. When you’re testing with users, you should include participants with different abilities, not just users who don’t have any kind of impairment.

You can do all kinds of tests and focus groups. If you don’t know how to find these users, there are resources. You can reach out to NGOs, schools, and support groups related to different disabilities. You can find some of these groups on social media and reach out to users to test with them.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“As SEOs, when we see an issue, we want to fix it. It’s important that you prioritise the fixes you want to do based on your business objectives. Hopefully, these business objectives also take into account the user experience and what’s best for the users.

When you find issues or areas of improvement, prioritise them, set those priorities very clearly, and make your fixes accordingly.

Accessibility is going to be even more crucial in 2025, so hopefully that’s part of the strategies that will be implemented in the coming months.”

Sara Fernández Carmona is an International SEO Consultant, and you can find her over at Sara-Fernandez.com.