WordPress (WP) is one of the most popular website creation platforms. According to W3Techs, WordPress was used by 43.2% of websites last year. It is a powerful platform, so it should be accessible to all users, with or without disabilities. Digital accessibility is preventing or removing barriers that users face while interacting with a website or digital asset. In this blog, we will explore the 7 best WordPress accessibility plugins that you can use to make your website more inclusive.
Benefits of making your WordPress website accessible
Before we jump into the main topic, let us first understand the benefits of making your WordPress website accessible:
- Improves your SEO score, as search engines prefer websites that follow WCAG.
- Increases market reach as more users can access and enjoy the content of your website.
- Enhances user experience
- Helps to avoid legal issues
One of the best ways to make your site accessible is by using extensions that offer features or testing your web page for accessibility problems.
Top 7 WordPress accessibility plugins
Many plugins may look convincing but aren’t effective or are dated. Here are our seven most recommended accessibility plugins that you can use:
1. accessWidget by accessiBe
accessWidget by accessiBe is a leading AI-based solution to enhance accessibility. It can automatically make your website compliant with standards like WCAG, ADA, etc. This is a comprehensive solution to your website’s accessibility issues. Big companies such as British Airways, Hilton, and UCLA are among its top clients.
AccessBe works by analyzing and applying the necessary changes 24/7. It covers all aspects of accessibility, from screen reader compatibility to animation accessibility. It doesn’t require any coding or technical skills to use it. One of the best advantages of using accessBe is that you can personalize the accessibility experience on your website.
2. WP Accessibility Helper (WAH)
WP Accessibility Helper (WAH) is a complete package tool that helps improve the accessibility of your website. Here are some of the best features of the WAH:
- Helps you add skip links, landmarks, aria labels, etc. to your website elements.
- Can easily change website aesthetic elements, such as colors, fonts, etc.
- Can add navigational elements such as a table of contents (TOC), a reading guide, and a back-to-top button
- Lastly, it is multi-lingual and supports RTL (right-to-left) languages such as Arabic.
Furthermore, WAH also offers a pro version with extra functionalities and integrations.
3. Accessibility by UserWay
Accessibility by UserWay is another AI-powered plugin that can automatically make your website accessible and compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. It offers enhanced readability, navigation, focus, interaction, and text size adjustments.
Furthermore, you can also turn on or off the animations, audio, pop-up messages, etc. The Userway site grants you a free plan for personal use and, additionally, a paid option for business use. The greatest benefit of using this extension is that it ensures your site stays reachable without impacting the layout or operation.
4. One Click Accessibility
One Click Accessibility is a minimalistic and efficient tool that enhances the accessibility of your website by incorporating basic features and options. Additionally, it offers an interface that enables your visitors to modify the accessibility settings of your website. It offers similar features as WAH. However, it also has some additional features, such as:
- Lets you add an underline links option and a readable font option.
- Easy installation process that does not affect the website’s performance and has minimal impact on the website’s appearance.
5. WP Accessibility
WP Accessibility provides a range of solutions that can resolve common accessibility issues for your site built on WordPress. Here are some of the features of this plugin:
- Allows you to remove title attributes from images and links, target attributes from links, and redundant title attributes from page lists and menus.
- Enables you to force a search page error when submitting a search with an empty text string.
Furthermore, WP offers many options and settings that you can tweak to improve your website’s accessibility.
6. Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker
Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker helps you check and monitor the accessibility of your website. It provides users with a dashboard that shows a detailed view of the accessibility status and issues of your website.
The plugin also provides detailed reports and recommendations on how to fix the issues. You can schedule automatic scans and receive email notifications.
7. Accessibility Suite
Accessibility Suite improves the accessibility of your images and videos on your website. It also provides a dashboard that shows you the accessibility status and issues of your media files. The plugin is verified and can work up to WordPress CMS 5.8.4. This is one of the most preferred tools while performing an audit, as it helps you find most accessibility issues.
Furthermore, you can tweak the WordPress scanner to identify issues according to certain guidelines.
Wrapping up
Most of these WordPress tools or plugins don’t require a skilled employee to identify and fix accessibility issues. Does that mean plugins can easily make your website completely accessible?
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. It’s like making the tastiest pineapple pizza and expecting an Italian to eat it. Accessibility is not a one-size-fits-all solution, as different users require different solutions. It is a constantly evolving process. These plugins can help you identify web accessibility issues and fix them. However, not all issues are identified, and they don’t resolve complex problems, so they require a Web accessibility audit service provider to intervene and remediate them.
An accessible site design benefits all users, regardless of the technologies used to interact with your website. At AEL Data, we have a team of specialists who carefully audit each web page to identify accessibility issues and remediate them.
Punit