Today, people are forced to rely on the Internet more and more to communicate, share or receive information, or interact with others. To engage their audiences, create awareness and advocate for change, nonprofit organizations leverage the use of the web.
But as they progress towards these goals, they need to ensure that they do not ignore the aspects of web accessibility and web for disabled. At the same time, it is vital to understand that for most of the users the internet is still a problematic area because of some restrictions.
This blog post aims at raising awareness on the relevance of the accessibility and inclusiveness in web development Long Island so that more and more people can easily access your content online.
Inclusive Web Design: Its Importance Today And In The Future
The first page towards how to develop an effective nonprofit website that is friendly for everyone is to embrace disability friendly web design. What inclusive web design means is designing web sites that are easily navigable, understandable, and valuable for people with different mental and physical capacities, learning and communicating disorders, and other impairments without requiring assistance.
This can be achieved the use of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which provides a common reference for Web accessibility for, and developed by, developers.
In this way nonprofit organizations can reach out to a larger population and be able to relay their information easier. In addition, it can also add value to the organizational image and its reputation as such practice reflects dedication towards the common good and community contribution.
Promoting Accessible Information For Diverse Consumer Groups
The provision of accessible content provides opportunities for a wide variety of users to interact with nonprofit websites. This speaks to the employment of simple, straightforward and comprehensible language, as well as organization of materials in a straightforward way.
There should be a secondary text description, captions, or even a transcript for videos, and images specifically for users with visual impairments or screen reader users.
Through the web design companies New York of WAAG design principles for accessible internet content, the ‘gatekeepers’ of the nonprofit organizations can contribute to overcoming this problem and assure.
Raising Technologies To Enhance Access
Besides adherence to the design and content standards, the representatives of nonprofit organizations can also turn to the use of technology. This entails enabling of assistive technologies such as screen readers for the disabled, voice recognition for the hand-less and magnify tools for the visually impaired while they surf the net.
Moreover, using tactics such as using responsive design and creating mobile site can help different users with different tools and connection speed to have smooth access to the information and recurrently assess progress during creating public value.
Furthermore, accessibility features being incorporated into the website updating and other similar processes guarantee that accessibility standards are incorporated to keep the website functional to every user, even if there are updates in the future.
Adopting An Organizational Culture Of Accessibility
Making a website accessible is not an annual project but a continuous one that demands effort and hard work from all the parties involved. This way, different people who get involved in the creation of nonprofit websites tend to make the site accessible, which makes accessibility a key priority.
For increasing the awareness of the nonprofit organizations towards accessibility and inclusiveness in development of websites and other technologies, it is important that these organizations invest in staff and volunteer training and educate the board of directors on the issues of accessibility.
Training can cover workshops and webinars and informational products that describe general guidelines and recommendations for making materials more accessible and compliant with accessibility standards.
Conclusion
Thus, ensuring accessibility and inclusion in the development of nonprofit’s website is not a legal necessity only but an ethical imperative. Therefore, nonprofit organizations can design a more inclusive website that will help organizations engage users from various backgrounds.
They follow the measures of an inclusive web design, prepare empowered diverse users for web & app access, enhance the technological solutions, promote the culture of accessibility, and regularly assess progress during creating public value.
Through embracing web ease/reach and diversity, nonprofits could mobilize people, foster positive societal transformation, and support their grand agenda best.
