Secrets of the SEO Ancients - Section 508 - Part II
Secrets of the SEO Ancients - Section 508 - Part II
By Andrew Horan
In Part I, we discussed the reasons to make your web pages compliant to the section 508 of the U.S. Disabilities act. The disabled are an avid user base that many web pages ignore. This article discusses the other reason why it is important to make web pages compliant to section 508 - it is easy to make web pages compliant. Even if you do not live in the United States and your customer base is not in the United States, I would strongly recommend making your web pages section 508 compliant. Opening up your web page to a motivated customer base, a customer base that your competition may be ignoring is a good thing regardless of where you live, especially since you are already doing most of it.
The U.S. government supplies detailed instructions on how to make web pages accessible to the disabled. This article is meant to provide commentary and supplement the instructions provided by the US government (See the URL provided in the About Author section of this article).
It is important to understand who you are excluding by not making your web page accessible to the disabled. Those who are color blind or otherwise vision impaired might not be able to understand your graphics. Those who are deaf may not be able to understand the audio on your web page. Those who are vision impaired may not be able to navigate your web pages. If the handicapped navigate your web page, do you want them to try your competition’s web page?
The US disabilities act section 508 provides instructions to make your web pages accessible for individuals with additional disabilities but I am going to focus on the two disabilities that I have mentioned above: hearing impaired and sight impaired.
Individuals who are color blind or vision impaired may not be able to identify similar colors or colors with similar tints and hues. The recommended solution to this problem is printing out the web page in black and white. If you can tell the difference between the colors, your web page would pass this issue. Another recommendation for graphics is a textual translation of the graphics. This helps those unable to see the graphics. Using Alt tags to describe the graphics or captions would enable the visually impaired to understand the graphics through the use of a screen reader program. Frequently, graphics are accompanied by captions to explain them anyways. If you have a graph or a picture, ALT tags are used by Search Engines to rank the graphic. Many web developers ignore putting ALT tags on graphics but search engines catalog pictures by their ALT tags. Web pages can be accessed through ALT tags on graphics and there is far lesser competition for high search engine result pages with graphics then there is with web pages. If you ad ALT tags to describe your graphics, your web pages would get higher results on the Search Engine Result Pages or SERP’s and the vision impaired could understand what you intended with the graphics.
If your web page has an audio component, it only has to be made compliant if it serves a purpose rather than just to provide ambiance or serve as a sound track. Sound tracks do not have to be made compliant. If the audio conveys a message or provides instructions, the US government suggests that you provide a textual equivalent to the audio. There is an additional bonus for you. Search Engines are just beginning to catalog sounds like graphics and web pages. Yahoo has a working sound search tool and Google will soon follow suit. Web pages can be accessed through ALT tags on audio and there is far lesser competition for high search engine result pages with audio then there is with web pages. If you ad ALT tags to describe your audio, your web pages would get higher results on the SERP’s and the hearing impaired could understand what you intended with the audio.
The moral is that it if you want a large source of largely untapped traffic coming to your website; make your website compliant to Section 508 of the US Disabilities Act. Most of the techniques that you would use you should use anyways to get better results on the Search Engine Results Pages.
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