How accessible are you?
Our society is ever diversifying, people from a whole manner of backgrounds, experiences, lifestyles and abilities all live in one place. As a business it is up to you to make your services available to everyone. This, in no small part, means ensuring that you cater to the disabled. And in the same way that the entrance to your bricks and mortar agency might have a ramp for a disabled client, you must apply the same mentality to your website.
Accessibility to your website for the less able-bodied should be a theme that runs from the initial design all the way to the finished product. Any features or design choices that may be deemed exclusionary should be revised at the earliest possible opportunity.
Now, I know there’s not a single one of you out there that would intentionally exclude a potential client, however there may be one or two things that just didn’t come to mind or you may not have even known about.
Something as simple as your choice of font, its colour and its size can greatly help someone with a sight disability. For example, did you know approximately 8% of the population have a red-green colour deficiency? This is the most Common form of colour blindness, with one of the people affected being Mark Zuckerberg, which is why Facebook is blue.
I’ve been to a fair amount of Estate Agency websites that have had a video or flash animation as an introduction page. First things first, I would recommend against these as they often cause complications on mobile devices. There’s nothing wrong with video (I’d even go as far as to say I encourage it) but make sure its embedded as part of your main site and not an un-skippable introduction. And where possible make sure you have subtitles or audio descriptions available so everyone can enjoy it.
There’s a whole lot of design choices you can employ from the user interface (UI) side that’ll help from the get go, and that’s a great start! But to make your website truly accessible it needs to be part of your websites build from the very beginning. There’s a LOT of clever work that goes on behind the scenes of well built website, which is why when it comes to picking your designer make sure you pick one who can deliver on both ends.
At Estate Apps we pride ourselves on making our services available to everyone. The responsive design we implement as standard not only helps your mobile users, but helps desktop sites adapt to high levels of zoom for the visually impaired.
Whether you’re a well established Estate Agency, or a relative new-comer, taking accessibility into account while dealing with your business can only yield positive results, making your services available to a wider audience.
So regardless of how long you’ve been in business, consider Estate Apps when you’re looking to upgrade your website. Our high quality templates and custom websites are not only geared up for SEO but we’re ever improving our responsive technology to cater both mobile and disabled users.
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