Modern technology has made many aspects of life more accessible to people with disabilities. Similarly, if your online business is not accessible to these target customers, it means that you are excluding some people who might be willing to spend money with you. To build a Shopify store that is friendly to users with disabilities, you need to follow Shopify ADA Compliant.
In the article below, BSS Commerce will guide you comprehensively to help you design and optimize your Shopify store according to Shopify ADA compliant.
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What Is Shopify ADA Compliant?
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a set of regulations designed to make businesses and public services accessible to people with disabilities. It sets out the rules that businesses must follow to make their businesses accessible to people with various disabilities and impairments.
For traditional brick-and-mortar stores, this could include making a store wheelchair accessible or navigable for people with mobility issues. It could also include making products and services accessible to people who are deaf or blind.
And now that the internet is so widely used, ADA compliance extends to Shopify store design and even mobile applications. This means that your Shopify store must be designed to be accessible to people with disabilities that affect their vision, hearing, or physical abilities. There are many different ways in which Shopify stores must take into account the different needs of people and ensure that no one is prevented from accessing their products and services.
On the other hand, when designing a store that is Shopify ADA compliant, you not only keep your business in line with the law but also expand your business to new customers. More importantly, it will give your store a boost in search engine rankings on the internet.
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Benefits of an ADA Compliant Shopify Store
Designing an ADA compliant Shopify store will bring practical benefits to your store. But are the benefits or revenue from a group of customers really big enough for you – a small store with limited resources – to invest in?
Improve your SEO rankings
Search engines are changing more than ever, crawling pages with a more human intent. A key component of WCAG is screen reader accessibility. And these readers crawl your pages in the same way as search engines.
If your Shopify store meets the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,” it will likely appeal to screen readers, search engines, and users. This will improve your SEO rankings.
Therefore, Shopify ADA compliant designs will have image alt text (ALT tags), meta tags, detailed image descriptions, and video transcripts, etc. are often seriously invested.
Increase customer traffic
In case your web design is not ADA compliant Shopify, millions of potential customers cannot access your Shopify store because of their disabilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 1.3 billion people, or about 15–20% of the global population, experience disability. This makes people with disabilities the largest minority group in the world. This means that your Shopify store will lose nearly that many potential customers if you refuse to upgrade your store to Shopify ADA compliant.
Many of them may be interested in your products or services. But they will not be able to navigate when they come to your Shopify store to buy anything or even contact you. All because your Shopify store is only accessible to people without disabilities. Therefore, they may move on to your competitors.
How to Drive Traffic to Shopify Store for Free
For example, if you have a video showing the benefits of your product but it does not have subtitles, people with hearing impairments will not be able to learn how great your product is. The same thing happens when your Shopify store has images, but no alt text (ALT tags). The advantage of alt text is that it enables screen readers to interpret the image for a person with visual impairment. So if your Shopify store does not support these, you will lose a significant amount of traffic. Similarly, it is important to ensure that your Shopify store is fully accessible without a mouse so that people with physical limitations can use it.
Boost your brand reputation
In fact, an ADA compliant Shopify store design can increase your customer base by millions simply because your Shopify store is more accessible to them.
Another benefit is that not only will you gain more customers, but those customers will also understand how valuable they are to your organization. After all, they may have visited a few other Shopify stores that were not ADA compliant; and each time they were frustrated by the lack of access to content until they landed on yours.
And as soon as those new customers tell their friends and family how they found your Shopify store, more people will know that you made sure your Shopify store is ADA compliant.
Your Shopify store will become more special, standing out from your competitors because you made the effort to make it accessible to everyone. So, making your Shopify store ADA compliant is a great way to get some positive press for your organization.
ADA compliance improves the usability of your website
Overall, designing a Shopify store that is easier to navigate and more functional will benefit all users while still adhering to WCAG guidelines. Making your Shopify stores easier to understand will allow everyone, disabled or not, to quickly find what they are looking for.
If you choose to follow the guidelines, your Shopify store will definitely convert more potential customers worldwide. Because users will trust that they will always be able to easily find the content they need.
If you are not sure where to start when designing Shopify ADA compliant, continue to the next section for a step-by-step guide on how to make your Shopify store ADA compliant.
Step-By-Step Guide On How To Make Your Shopify Store ADA Compliant
Assess your current website
In the website assessment step, you need to review the accessibility of the website for all users, including people with disabilities. Some tools that can be used for this step include: WAVE, Lighthouse,… In addition, you can manually test the website using screen reader software.
Choose a Shopify ADA compliant graphic design style
When designing graphics or choosing themes for a Shopify store, businesses need to note that the flashing effect should not exceed 3 times/second. Otherwise, these effects can accidentally cause seizures for people visiting your website.
Another visual element to consider is the colors you use in your store and the contrast between them. Appropriate contrast makes it easier for people with visual, cognitive, or neurological disabilities to read text. You can find tools to help you test contrast.
Graphics should have descriptions or captions so that people with visual impairments can read and understand the content. When adding informative content or engaging visual content, all of your users should have equal access to it.
Add alt text and readable fonts for all users
Your website needs to ensure that all text content is visible and readable to all users. You should carefully consider every element on your website, especially those related to cognition.
To do this, you should first provide alt text for all images on your store. These alt-text annotations will allow users with visual impairments to clearly read image descriptions. Images may make your website look nice, but they are not necessarily useful for people who are blind or visually impaired. Some people can see more than others, but for many, it may not be clear what your images are or even if there are any images at all. This is where image alt text comes in.
Use easy-to-read text, fonts, and contrasting text colors against the background to help users read the content on the website. Some Shopify ADA compliant easy-to-read fonts that can be used include: Georgia, Quicksand, and Open Sans. In addition, for colors, you should note to use contrasting colors between text and background to avoid causing frustration and creating a feeling of stress for readers.
One of the simplest things you can do with your website is to allow users to change the font size. If you have a Shopify store, there are several plugins that can help you do this easily. This can help many people, including those who are blind or visually impaired, and those with dyslexia or other learning or cognitive disabilities.
Building an ADA compliant Shopify store will fail if it is not understandable to a wide audience. Your website should include labels on content and media blocks to help users with disabilities avoid user errors and have readable instructions on all website forms.
Some text-to-speech software will not read complex image-based documents. Therefore, to avoid making it difficult for blind and visually impaired users to navigate your website and use information, your website should provide documents in text format.
In addition, navigating your website can be difficult for some people, including those who are blind and visually impaired, as well as some people with physical disabilities. Keyboard navigation instead, which allows them to navigate your website using their keys, makes it easier for everyone to interact with your website.
Read more: How to Make a Website to Sell Products
Use captions and audio descriptions in videos
Videos are a great form of content, but many people are unable to interact with them because they are not accessible. If you want to make your videos accessible, this means providing captions for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Transcripts provide an alternative but are less effective. For people with visual impairments, audio descriptions make videos more accessible when there is an important action they need to know about.
If you have audio content, such as a podcast, provide a transcript as an alternative image. This allows people who cannot hear your audio to still benefit from it.
Update ADA compliance changes regularly
ADA is essential for websites and is gradually being noticed by many businesses around the world. Not only does it help upgrade your website and make it more inclusive, creating an ADA-compliant Shopify store also helps you not miss out on users with disabilities. That way, you can make your website experience better for all users.
Tools to Check and Maintain Shopify ADA Compliant
Accessibility Spark
Accessibility Spark is a fantastic tool for rapidly and simply identifying any ADA compliant Shopify store problems with your Shopify business. It is user-friendly and provides thorough reports along with fixes for any Shopify ADA compliant problems.
The application facilitates conformity to stringent WCAG and ADA criteria and is simple to use, requiring only five minutes of deployment. Strongly advised for anyone in need of a trustworthy, reasonably priced ADA compliance check.
XCompliant
XCompliant is an excellent ADA Compliance Checker tool that streamlines and expedites the website validation process. It provides thorough testing that addresses all pertinent WCAG 2.0 web accessibility criteria and is simple to set up.
Additionally, it provides thorough reports with unambiguous instructions so you can see problems early and fix them swiftly. Furthermore, Xcompliant’s user interface is quite simple and easy to use; anyone searching for an accessible program should definitely check it out!
AccessiBe
One of the greatest ADA Compliance Checker applications available is this one. An accessibility audit, an AI-powered tool to assist search engines in indexing your website in accordance with WCAG 2.1 guidelines, and an automated contrast and color combination tester are just a few of its fantastic features.
AccessiBe is simple to set up and use because of its great and straightforward user interface. Its automatic Shopify ADA compliant tests might save you a great deal of time.
Siteimprove
The many tests and checklists are straightforward to traverse thanks to Siteimprove’s extremely basic and user-friendly design. Additionally, it offers some excellent insights and suggestions to help you make sure your website complies with all applicable ADA regulations. It’s a fantastic solution that guarantees your website stays Shopify ADA compliant while saving you time.
Wave Accessibility
For individuals who want a full app, Wave Accessibility is an excellent ADA Compliant Checker. It features thorough scans to guarantee correct compliance and provides thorough advice when it detects problems.
Because of the well-designed user interface, running a scan on my website is quick and simple to set up. Above all, this software helps me ensure that all applicable requirements are being fulfilled.
EqualWeb
Another outstanding ADA Compliance Checker software is EqualWeb. Numerous features are available, including comprehensive website support, automated testing, and thorough reporting. The software is easy to set up and produces accurate and dependable results.
With only a few clicks, you can rapidly verify if your website complies with ADA requirements thanks to the user interface’s great intuitiveness and ease of use.
Axess Lab AI Compliance System
One of the greatest ADA Compliance Checker applications out there is Axess Lab AI Compliance System. It contains all the capabilities you would anticipate, including automatic audits and scans, reports of problems found, and detailed suggestions. However, this app’s unique feature is its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify possible problems that manual testing is unable to identify.
Userway Website Accessibility Widget
A great tool for making sure your website complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act is the Userway Website Accessibility Widget. It offers thorough accessibility audit results and suggestions that are suited to WCAG 2.0 criteria, and it is simple to deploy.
Its AI-powered control panel makes it simple to modify or personalize settings to suit the requirements or tastes of each user.
Conclusion
To sum up, company owners must use Shopify ADA Compliant strategies to make sure their websites adhere to the most recent accessibility standards. Putting money into learning how to make your Shopify store ADA can benefit your company and open up a sizable revenue stream. You may fully make your ADA compliant Shopify store with a few easy steps.
To verify your Shopify ADA Compliant, Shopify also offers a number of choices, such as Accessibility Spark, XCompliant, AccessiBe, Siteimprove, Wave Accessibility, and Equal Web. Look for features like automated scanning, the provider’s reputation, and an easy-to-use interface when choosing an ADA Compliance Checker for your Shopify business. By offering an inclusive experience on your website or online platform, using one of these applications will help you increase customer service and loyalty. It is highly recommended! We hope that the BSS Commerce article above will make it simple for you to set up your store for a profitable company.
