You are familiar with how to make your brick-and-mortar restaurant easily accessible to everyone. Have you ever thought about the website for your restaurant?
It’s high time you think about website accessibility. Why? It’s the law.
This article will discuss web accessibility improvements that every restaurant should make this year. Let’s first look at the legalities.
What is the Law?
In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed into law. It is a comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation. It bans discrimination against persons with disabilities and states that this group must be afforded the same rights as all Americans.
The ADA extends into the digital realm as well. Even though the ADA does not mention web accessibility standards in its entirety, federal courts have ruled websites must be accessible for people with disabilities.
According to the Washington Post, many U.S. businesses are being sued for disability. This includes restaurants.
Your website should be accessible to everyone, even those with disabilities or aging.
What does web accessibility mean for your restaurant?
First, let’s define a disability. The CDC defines a disability as “any condition of body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult to perform certain activities (activity limitation), and interact with the environment around them (participation limitations).
Accessibility for people with disabilities is a must on your website. If it’s not accessible, you risk significant liability and even lawsuits.
Your website should be accessible to everyone. If you have online ordering, you can make it accessible to anyone. (tweet this)
Today’s websites don’t comply with accessibility standards. Your competition may not meet these standards.
This is where you can make your restaurant stand out. These are the most important areas to focus on when you’re looking at web accessibility improvements.
- Visual
- Speech
- Auditory
- Cognitive
- Physical
- Neurological
You must have web accessibility upgrades
Let’s now take the categories and break down what upgrades you should be considering.
- Your website should support keyboard navigation. The Tab key allows users to navigate around your website by pressing the Tab key. Today keyboard-only users are all around, so make sure that your website visitors have the ability to use their Tab key to hover over each website element.
- Add an interactive accessibility toolbar. An example: A partially blind or elderly person might be trying to read your text. This will allow website visitors to adjust text size to better see your content.
- Your visitors should also be able to alter the website’s color contrast. Some people prefer dark text with a light background to read it better than others.
- Accessibility toolbars should include audio and video playback options. A person with a hearing loss or vision impairment can hear and see what you have to share in audio and video.
- A text-based menu is also desirable. This is for people with hearing and visual impairments. Screen readers are often used by website visitors to “read” your website’s content. They should be able to scan the text, not just the navigation menu.
- Alt text should be included on all images so that people with disabilities can read and hear it. The alt text should be descriptive enough to allow people with disabilities to read the images.
- If you want your website to comply with the ADA, don’t use auto-playing videos. This applies to both the hearing impaired and those with sensitive issues.
- Captions can be added to videos for people who have hearing impairments so that they can understand what is being said.
- Use pdf menus sparingly. This is a simple way to make your website accessible, but it’s not accessibility-friendly. Because screen readers can be used to view your web menu, it will be much easier for people with disabilities. Your mobile website will also benefit from this because the menu adapts to screen sizes where a PDF won’t.
- Online ordering is easy if you label your fields correctly. Screen readers will be able to tell what your visitors are ordering. Your form should also be accessible via keyboard.
Your website will be more popular than it is now. Your interface will be easier for them to use.
Your upgraded accessibility improves SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO), is an important aspect of your website’s success. Did you know that improving accessibility can improve your SEO?
Google loves well-structured websites. Google prefers websites that are simple to navigate, quick to load, and easy to search.
This is what Google considers when it decides where to put your restaurant website in search engine results.
- Site speed
- Meta descriptions
- Titles of pages
- Description alt text on images
- Header tags should be arranged in a structured way and the correct use of them
- All links require descriptive link text
- Machine-readable content
- You can make your text easier to read by increasing the color contrast
You are actually improving the value of your website in Google’s search engine ranking system.
