When it comes to improving your website’s site speed optimization, considering website accessibility is an important factor. Website accessibility is directly related to your website’s ranking on the Google search results, as well as being important for improving the speed of your site. But how can this be the case? How can optimizing your website for accessibility help with the overall site speed optimization as well?
A lot of website developers incorrectly assume that website optimization for persons with disabilities is a waste of time. However, this is so far from the truth! In fact, optimizing your website for accessibility can actually offer a plethora of different benefits. Website accessibility will allow your users to navigate the website more easily—even those users who are not suffering from a disability. This is important for SEO and search engine ranking, as the search engines’ algorithms look for websites which will be of most use for viewers. However, another benefit of working on website accessibility is that site speed optimization will also be improved.
It can sometimes seem a little bit difficult to understand how working on website accessibility can improve your website’s speed. One of the biggest arguments to this argument is that adding new features ought to slow down the website speed. However, this simplistic assumption is not fully accurate.
As part of this, when undergoing website optimization for accessibility for persons with disabilities, it is important to focus on simplicity. There is no point in adding complex features that will slow your site down; this will not help with site speed optimization or with accessibility. As such, it is important to focus on small changes. This could include adding alt text to your images, which will not compromise noticeably on site speed optimization.
Splitting large amounts of content up into smaller chunks is a good way of working for both website accessibility and site speed optimization. One such example would be digital landmarks; these can help to break up the text for accessibility, and should also help with site speed optimization.
Optimizing your website for persons with disabilities can sometimes help with side speed optimization, however, others can impact on site speed optimization. Websites that are optimized for accessibility won’t be of any use if they are too slow to load. As such, if you are implementing website accessibility features, it is important that you give some focus to site speed optimization as well.
Site speed optimization can be improved in a number of ways. Make sure that you have invested in good quality hosting and check for dead or broken links on your website. In addition, you should also make sure that your website is responsive on mobile devices too.
Website optimization for persons with disabilities can both help and hinder site speed optimization. Websites that are well optimized should not suffer from slow site speeds as a result. As such, it is important to work with both accessibility and site speed optimization practices in mind when developing your website.
