SEO or accessibility? Why not both?
Being one of the top of search engine results is essential, but so is having a website that is accessible to the largest number of people. SEO techniques and accessibility techniques have several things in common.
If you think about it, this similarity makes sense. The idea behind accessibility is to allow the visually impaired, among others, to navigate the web in an efficient and coherent way. The goal is for these users to be able to understand and interact with a website without losing any information. A search engine robot, like a visually impaired Internet user, is not able to read the text inside an image or a Flash animation. Similarly, the robot cannot interpret Java Applets, and cannot access multimedia content such as videos. The first priority for accessibility is to solve these limitations.
If we compare Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for SEO to the W3C accessibility standards, we can see how much the two have in common.
The visually impaired, as well as those with poor vision, frequently navigate the web with screen readers like Lynx and Jaws. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines recommend that you “use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would.” Another bit of Google advice is to ensure “that your <title> elements and alt attributes are descriptive and accurate.” In terms of accessibility, a big priority is to have text alternatives to images, Flash animations, and other “inaccessible” content. This serves as a way to pass on content information and avoid unnecessary user information loss.
It’s difficult to find a compromise between accessibility and SEO in terms of these two types of tags. The overuse of alternative keywords is not useful for the visually impaired, nor is it for search engines. Thus, a representative description of the graphic element, with a few keywords sprinkled in, appears to be the best solution.
According to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, the first and foremost goal of accessibility is (and should be) to make the Internet and its services available to all. As SEO on Google is becoming faster and more important, we should use it in a way that increases Web accessibility. This will help us create a more inclusive web community.
For more information:
• W3C, Introduction to Web Accessibility
• W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
To check if your website is accessible:
• Ocawa
• W3C Markup Validation Service
• Fujitsu Web Accessibility Inspector
Adapted by Jessica Hartstein
Tags: accessibility, google, SEO
