Website Accessibility Services in Dublin
Meeting accessibility standards
Website accessibility involves design, content, and code tweaks that render sites easier to use. This ensures a consistent experience for all your site visitors, including those with disabilities or limitations in areas such as sight, hearing, dexterity, or cognition. The main way to ensure a site is accessible is by assessment according to W3C Accessibility Standards.
The web is universal, and your website should be as well. Luckily, lots of accessibility improvements can be made retrospectively, so if you recently invested in a new website, you don’t have to scrap it all to achieve accessibility. You may assume that developers and designers know all the ins and outs of accessibility and will have baked it into your site, but this is rarely true. Accessibility is a vast subject, and sites have to be evaluated and improved on a case-by-case basis.
Our approach to web accessibility
Perception, understanding, contribution, navigation & interaction
Lots of design glitz and razzle-dazzle elements can, unintentionally, make parts of a site or page inaccessible or just hard to interact with. We work with you and/or your design and development teams to suggest simple changes that will improve the experience for all visitors without losing meaning or visual impact – whether that’s just making it easier for people to navigate around the site or making it possible for them to consume your content.
We have internal processes and tools to help us meet both the W3C Accessibility Standards and the EU’s EN 301 549 standard. These look at areas such as your code, content, headings, text structures, media, colours, and device rules.
Our web accessibility services
Conversation ⇢ If accessibility is a new concept for you, let’s start with a relaxed chat about what it could mean for your site.
Accessible content ⇢ We produce high quality content that follows accessibility best practice.
Accessibility audit ⇢ Get an assessment of your website’s accessibility issues and how they can be fixed.
Accessibility fixes ⇢ We can make most non-technical accessibility changes or create an action plan for your developer.
Ethical strategy ⇢ If accessibility is just the first step in your strategy, talk to us about ethical marketing and approaches focused on the pillars of people, planet, and profit.
SEO ⇢ If you have any kind of website, SEO will help it get found. We only practice white hat search engine optimisation.
Solving accessibility issues & making sites easy to use for all
Accessible websites benefit everyone
There’s no easy test you can take for a global ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ on accessibility, and no website can be said to be 100% accessible. Accessibility is something you will need to continually monitor and improve as new pages and fresh content are added.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) group accessibility into four principles – perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. There are lots of tools that can help to assess sites according to these accessibility principles, but successful implementation depends on interpreting the results and understanding the best way to fix each issue.
By working with an experienced team such as Engage, you can understand your site’s accessibility shortcomings and prioritise the changes that will have the widest results for the largest number of users.
We also consider accessibility when creating new content for clients. This means writing texts that are easy to understand and well-structured (both visually and in the code) and using content design – a design thinking approach that helps find the best way to present information.
We follow the WCAG-EM Website Accessibility Conformance evaluation methodology to meet the guidelines for both existing and new content, helping you meet the standards level you have set for your organisation (A, AA, AAA).
Why should websites be accessible?
Reach more people & improve their experience
Everyone is different, and thinking about accessibility means considering the experience that each individual has on your site. More and more organisations are making accessibility improvements to their sites. It’s quite simply the right thing to do.
People in every sector of every market, in every kind of job at every level, can have limitations or disabilities. Some of these are visible and some aren’t. A user on your site could be blind and use a screen reader to consume your content. They could have dyslexia and struggle to process a wall of text. They could have arthritis and find it hard to click on links or buttons. There are many reasons that people could have trouble interacting with a site. Sometimes the difficulty arises because of where the person is or the device they are using – imagine trying to watch a video on overcrowded public transport with no headphones or to navigate a website without a mouse.
One-off organic marketing packages
Looking for a quick, low-cost way to get started? Pick a one-off package and book a session. If you have a larger or ongoing project, we can provide a tailored quote after an initial call.
Who we’ve worked with
Enterprise Ireland · Health Service Executive (HSE) · Clinique · UCD Professional Academy · L’Oréal · Henkel · Local Enterprise Office · Digital Learning Institute · Spark Innovation Programme · Design, Print & Packaging Skillnet · see more…