When developing a website, it’s not enough that the content is tailored and optimized for the target audience of your products, services, and other offerings. Rather, website accessibility must be prioritized to ensure all users can access your online content. Considering that 26% of the US population and 16% of the global population have a disability, your website must be designed with physical, sensory, cognitive, and intellectual disabilities in mind.
Additionally, creating an accessible website can benefit your business. Research shows that making your website easier to navigate for the significant yet often overlooked market of users with disabilities can increase engagement, sales, and customer satisfaction. In contrast, e-commerce retailers that failed to make their websites accessible lost an estimated $828 million over the 2021 holiday season alone.
In light of the importance of website accessibility, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to provide web designers and developers with standards. Specifically, these design principles can be adopted when creating websites for older adults with poor vision, as vision impairments like presbyopia affect more than one in three (36.95%) Americans over 40.
Below, we highlight tips to make your website more accessible and low-vision friendly, thus meeting the needs and preferences of older adults who are increasingly using the internet in this digital age.
Choose readable fonts
Presbyopia, the most common vision problem affecting 128 million middle-aged and older adults in the US, is characterized by difficulty focusing on the details of nearby objects and printed text. Thus, your website must use font that is readable in terms of contrast, spacing, and recognizability. Examples include the sans-serif Arial, which is simple, versatile, and eliminates visual clutter to make it easier for low-vision users to read text.
A previous post on designing accessible websites for dyslexic people also recommends dyslexia-friendly fonts like OpenDyslexic. These fonts can also work for low-vision readers since their highly legible letters have distinct features and help reduce letter confusion. As a general rule, fonts with letters that look too small, too thin, or too similar must be avoided.
Provide text resizing options
While presbyopia affects near-distance vision, older adults may have prescriptions for other refractive errors due to progressive eye conditions like glaucoma and macular degeneration. In this case, optical retailer Readers offers bifocal glasses to combine prescriptions and help wearers seamlessly transition between near and distant vision correction. Older adults can choose lightweight frame styles like the square-shaped Eggers and half-rim Polk in different magnification powers. However, your website must still be adjustable to their visual difficulties to reduce the additional demand on their eyes.
As such, it helps to provide visitors the option to adjust the text size on your website based on their vision needs and preferences. Fortunately, the latest WordPress 6.7 update includes better font management features, such as editing font presets and resizing text for more responsive font scaling. The plug-in WP-Font-Resizer also allows users to control the text size and reset default font settings.
Utilize the hierarchy of information
Information hierarchy entails arranging visual and textual elements to let users comprehend their level of importance. While it’s a universal design principle for better UI/UX, it can be especially useful for older adults whose vision problems may hinder them from reading continuous blocks of text and processing an array of images without any breaks or visual cues. A simple way to organize your website content is to use headings and subheadings, which break down content into digestible chunks and guide users on navigating information from the most to the least important.
Pay attention to color and contrast
Due to the growing prevalence of age-related eye conditions like presbyopia, optical companies have developed specialized eyewear that helps reduce visual effort among low-vision older adults. A notable example is Bausch + Lomb, which Infuse Multifocal daily disposable contact lenses to manage the high prevalence of digital eye strain among presbyopes. Meanwhile, CooperVision’s Biofinity Multifocal contact lens has Aquaform Technology to hydrate the lens and avoid dry eyes even during extended wear.
Although using electronic devices to view websites can also expose older adults to dry eyes and digital eye strain, you can help protect their vision and maintain viewing comfort by paying attention to color and contrast. Ensure that the text doesn’t blend in with the background, and opt for warmer complementary colors to increase readability. However, be careful not to use black text against a bright, white-colored background since it may contribute to or worsen eye strain.
Test your web design and content
Remember to incorporate monitoring and evaluation into your web design and development process to continue improving accessibility. Consider using tools like Web Accessibility in Mind’s (WebAIM) Contrast Checker, which tests the contrast of content on your website through foreground and background eye dropper tools. There are also websites and applications that evaluate readability and accessibility features in line with the WCAG standards.
Lastly, you can reach out to your primary target audience—older adults with poor vision—to test your website and provide their feedback through surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. By collecting and analyzing data from these feedback channels, you can identify areas for improvement and adjust your website accordingly.
Continue reading WP Reset for more tips and resources on developing accessible, user-friendly, and effective websites.