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How to Test Sites Having Accessible WordPress Themes?
As you might have already noticed, the title itself indicates the presence of two questions in one.
First, how to choose accessible WordPress themes for your site.
Second, how to check the accessibility of sites.
I will come to both but let’s first understand what does website accessibility means?
What Is Website Accessibility?
Website accessibility is a term that refers to the practice of making your site more accessible, viewable for all kinds of people (person with or without disability) to let them interact and engage with the content seamlessly.
Now that you understand, what does website accessibility mean, you must know the method as well to execute it easily.
But before starting out, have a look at the fastest growing web design company in Los Angeles - SFWPExperts. Whether it is WordPress web design, WordPress development, branding, online marketing, SEO or PPC, they do it all and pretty well. As far as reliability goes, they always remain available for clients if they face any issue after opting for their offerings. You can have a word with them through call, email, and live chat options, no matter if it’s dawn or evening.
Diverting our attention for a moment, let’s quickly jump to how to choose an accessible WordPress theme for your site.
Steps To Choose An Accessible WordPress Theme
1. Pick a theme that is accessibility ready. Many theme developers are implementing the guidelines from the WordPress Theme Accessibility Handbook, so the best thing you can do to have a fully accessible website is simply ask them if a specific theme is accessibility ready.
For instance, just have a look at the Total WordPress theme. When you visit the UH website through WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool you will get to see how they have implemented the theme’s features to increase the usability of their website for all students.
2. Another way to get free accessible themes is by simply going to WordPress.org and clicking on the Themes menu link found at the top of the page. Theme Directory will be opened then and after that you can find a sub-menu named as Feature Filter. And just besides the title you will see there is a little gear, just click that. You will find plenty of options rendered on your screen to choose from.
3. Under Features, click the topmost feature that reads like Accessibility Ready.
4. You may then check mark more filters that you like. Just at your left you will also see there is a Apply Filters button that will display how many filters you have applied. Click it and wait for a couple of seconds.
5. Now pick a theme of your choice from the options shown on the monitor.
Take note that just because a theme shows up as Accessibility Ready does not guarantee it is “fully accessible.” However, if a theme developer has marked their theme as accessible, there is a high chance that it does the job. Unfortunately, if you face any issue do inform them so they can make necessary changes to themes for other users.
That aside, if you are put into a cumbersome situation at any point of time due to any technical glitch in your theme, site or plugin, have in mind we can help. The seasoned designers and developers imparting their service at our Los Angeles web design company are extremely talented and can fix technical issues rather quickly. You can reach out to us for a number of services such as fully accessible web design and development, homepage design and development, UI and UX design, social media marketing, copywriting, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and a lot more.
Free WordPress Plugins To Create A Fully Accessible Site
Sometimes you might want to build your own WordPress theme, or maybe just want to use a theme of your choice. There is no need to worry. The best thing about being a WordPress user is that it offers you hundreds of thousands of plugins to use for your site. Whenever you need something, probably you will find one that fits the bill.
Our top pick is WP Accessibility that has a wide array of tools to help you find out and resolve many common accessibility issues that you might face when using WordPress themes. The nice thing about this is that it requires very little expert knowledge and minimum setup.
WP Accessibility Helper (WAH) is another option you can rely on as it includes a slew of useful features for font resize, skip links, DOM (Document Object Model) scan and the rest. It is one of the fastest ways to add a lot of accessible features to your site in one go.
Some other WordPress plugins you might want to try out are solutions to more specific accessibility needs.
1. Accessible Fonts
The key role of Accessibility Widget is that it creates a font-size switcher widget for the sidebars on your site. This way readers who have come to your site can easily change the size of text that suits them best.
The second most popular option for easier reading, you can count on is the Zeno Font Resizer. What’s good about this plugin is it lets admins of websites to set the font resize options (the minimum & maximum size) and a cookie duration. This way users will be able to see the correct size font when they make a second visit to your site.
2. Text To Speech
For visually disabled readers audio options is a must-have to increase the user-friendliness of the site. My personal pick is Speaker - Page to Speech. This plugin is suitable to create an audio version of the posts published on your site.
A few of the best features that this plugin is known for are 190 human quality voices, 30+ languages, and most importantly works great with most themes.
Moving to the next option for audio accessibility G Speech Text To Speech Solution is a free alternative. The good thing about this plugin is that it works well with the text on your site and adds an audio block to it. Then you can change colors, speaker voice and more using the given options.
3. Forms
A quick and easy way to make your contact form accessibility ready is to install plugins like Contact Form 7: Accessible Defaults and WCAG Form Fields For Gravity Forms. Another way to make your contact form accessibility ready is using plugins like “Formidable Forms”.
Besides, there is a large number of tools and plugins available to help you with various issues associated with making websites fully accessible for users. You just need to do a little bit of research to look for them.
Be mindful that our Los Angeles web design company is always ready to help you with our experience, no matter if it is associated with web design, web development or internet marketing. Currently, we have 600+ clients all across the globe who have chosen us for quality service. We can deliver you the same if you are in need of any services such as customized web design and development, SEO-friendly design, logo design, website support and maintenance, PPC, SEO and so on.
How To Test Your Website Accessibility?
Once your fully accessible site is ready to be up, it is a good idea to test for any bugs or errors. Although there are numerous methods and softwares to test whether or not your site is accessible, there are just a few to make testing a cakewalk.
We have already mentioned one of them in this article i.e, WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool. Being an extremely helpful tool it shows up every alert, error, feature, structural element and many more, so you can fix up the issues after getting notified.
Another powerful tool for web developers is Tota11y that is developed by the Khan Academy keeping a proper accessibility visualization tool in mind. To enable the accessibility tool you just need to add this JS file to your site. This particular tool can be found at the bottom of the screen appearing as a little glass icon. Just click that to see all the accessible elements on your page and errors that you might want to resolve.
Bear in mind that professional help is always at your disposal if you run into any problem that you can’t handle. Our Los Angeles web design company is committed to resolve every issue that your site has, whether it is associated with web design or plugin development. Based on the quality of services that we deliver, every year more number of clients want to work with us. To stay in touch with us to get services like ecommerce web design and development, website redesign, icon design, search engine optimization, email marketing or pay per click advertising, just make a phone call or drop us an email.
Final Thoughts On Website Accessibility
Website accessibility is more like an important functionality for your site if you really want to attract huge traffic to your site. I hope now you would have completely understood whether or not making your website fully accessible is necessary.
Just have one thing clear in your mind that having an easy to perceive and easy to navigate site is the first step to engage your potential customers. They are the one who are going to give you business down the road.
So what are you waiting for? Take this opportunity to bring the tools discussed above in action to increase your website accessibility. Needless to say, whom should you approach when facing any difficulty throughout the process - SFWPExperts. Being the prominent Wordpress website design company, we promise to offer you reliable and effective services such as cutting edge web design and development, digital marketing, SEO, PPC and so forth.
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How to Test Sites Having Accessible WordPress Themes?
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