Now almost everyone has access to the internet. Still, people with disabilities have trouble while accessing the internet. So, it’s essential for healthcare website designs to follow ADA standards.
ADA (the Americans with Disabilities Act), a comprehensive civil rights law, protects individuals with disabilities from discrimination. Because many websites do not follow the ADA standard when designing a website, so people with disabilities have issues on the internet.
With ADA compliance services in healthcare website design, gets access to all the users. This proactive approach helps your healthcare services grow and emphasizes its commitment to serving all the users on the internet.
For successful online marketing, creating an accessible internet for everyone is the first and foremost step in website design.
In 2010, issued a guideline of rules and regulations about website accessibility. The companies need to offer and maintain websites so that people with disabilities can access them.
Let’s see the importance of ADA standards and how to make a website ADA compliant.
Importance of ADA in Health Care Website Design
A website with ADA standards makes the website easily accessible to people with disabilities. But having an ADA compliance website also helps the owner in many ways. Here’re some benefits of ADA-compliant healthcare website design:
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Increase the target audience
A website with ADA compliance makes it accessible to people with disabilities. It means the healthcare services of the website get accessible for millions of individuals with disabilities.
So, if the medical website does not get optimized for people with disabilities, it may lead to a loss in revenue.
The potential patient would like to get the services offered by the medical website. If any disabled individual face difficulty in navigating the website may go to another competitor of yours.
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Improves Healthcare SEO rankings and brand reputation
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines include the basis for the search engine to rank the website. To be discovered by the visitors easily, the healthcare website design should comply with the guidelines. An ADA-compliant website also adds to the online reputation.
A better online reputation, easy accessibility improve healthcare SEO ranking. Better ranking, in turn, increases the website traffic and potential patients.
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Better User Experience
An ADA-compliant website gives a great user experience. When the website gets easier to comprehend for individuals with or without disabilities, it leads to more conversions.
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Help avoid Penalties and Legal Issues:
ADA provides a grading system to the website. Minimum grade A and maximum grade AAA is required for a website to get compliant. So, an ADA compliance website will improve the SEO efforts and help to avoid penalties.
Tips to make Health Care Website Design ADA compliance
When you start optimizing your website with ADA standards, you will find some good SEO strategies. Here’re some of the tips to add to your healthcare website design and make it ADA compliant.
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Ensure to include alt tags:
Alt Tags helps the visitor to know about the image, audio, and video file. It has a short description disabled people can read and understand the content of the medial files. Alt text allows the content to get read out loud.
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Add subtitle and text transcripts for the video:
For deaf or hard-of-hearing users, text transcriptions help to get the content on the website. So, ensure that the transcript gets accessible for the readers and also provide subtitles.
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Good contrast ratio:
To make reading the content on the website for visually impaired individuals.ls, focus on color codes and contrast ratio. The font color and the page color should have an adequate contrast ratio.
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Focus on the website’s layout consistency:
A poor website’s layout can hinder the navigation and readability of individuals with cognitive disabilities. So, it’s essential to have a consistent website layout.
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Be ready with feedbacks for errors:
For any error on the website, healthcare website design should have feedback offering an alternative solution.
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Provide Keyboard navigation:
People with mobility issues will find it easier to navigate the website through the keyboard. In keyboard navigation, you can include- skip navigation buttons and manually inserting tab index attributes
Summary:
An ADA-compliant website design helps reach the maximum target audience. Following ADA guidelines helps create a digital footprint. It not only makes the health care website easily accessible to all users, but it also helps in SEO ranking, building credibility, and brand reputation. Adding certain features to the website like- alt text, keyboard navigation, subtitles, transcripts, and consistent website layouts enables you to create an ADA-compliant website.