Google - Your Accessible Web Design Girlfriend

Owning a website and trying to get it to rank with Google is an awful lot like being a teenage boy trying to lose his cherry.

Google have got something you want and to get it you're either going to have to be very charming or you’re going to have to stump up a lot of cash.

One way is going to get guaranteed results but fill you with a sense of shame; the other is altogether more rewarding and free (sort of). In the world of search, this is the distinction between paid search marketing and natural search optimization: paying Google directly or working on having content Google deem worthy of recognition.

Assuming he wants to go the natural route, our teenage boy needs two things to get the girl: an attractive package and lots of other people telling her he’s got an attractive package.

But there’s a secret which is often overlooked (you may want to put on Lionel Richie’s "Hello" at this point) -the girl of your dreams is blind.

Which means that fancy clothes and £l00 haircuts just won't wash with her. So how do you convince her? Firstly, get lots of other people to send her in your direction (inbound links) and secondly, you need to let her know that what's on the inside is more important than the packaging (content over style).

How does this translate into action for your website?

1. Make sure all your text is readable

Blind people access the internet by using screen readers. These are pieces of software that scan the text on the page and create synthesized speech, which is read to the user.

Google access your site using "spiders" who crawl over your pages looking for content.

The temptation of many designers - especially those with a print background - is to corral important textual elements such as headings, menus and slogans, into looking exactly how they want. This is usually achieved by using Adobe Flash or by putting the text inside an image.

Googlina, like all blind users, struggles with Adobe Flash and can't see what's in your images at all.

The lesson? Deliver textual content as text not images.

2. Organise your pages

HTML (the "language" used to describe a web page to your browser) was intended as a means to exchange documents over the internet. Over the years we've extended the capabilities of the web beyond recognition, but a web page is still at heart a document and as such requires structure: clear, meaningful headings, a logical order and semantic organisation.

This helps both blind and sighted users discern the structure of your content and gives Google plenty of hints as to what your content is all about.

3. Make your link text meaningful

Those screen readers mentioned earlier often have a function to run through the content of a page and pick out links within it. These are then read out before anything else to allow the user to choose to follow them. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be read something like this "home, about us, our services, testimonials, contact us, click here, click here, click here, click here, follow this link, find out more, click here, click here".

Links need to be meaningful even when stripped of their visual context. And guess who else likes to be told what’s behind a link? Googlina! And in fact, having meaningful keywords in both your internal and external links is one of the most important factors in getting your site up the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

So there you have three tips for getting jiggy with Googlina. There are many more benefits to designing your site to meet accessibility standards:

• compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act (which all websites should have been doing since 1996)


• the rosy glow of having done something worthy


• reaching all your potential market (there are approximately 10 million UK residents registered as disabled)


• studies have shown that a website designed with accessibility in mind is likely to retain 30% more customers than one that isn't

If we design a website to be accessible, we've automatically designed a search optimized website.

If you'd like to discuss how Dreamberry Design can help you pull Googlina (we can also dress you in those fancy clothes and get you that £100 haircut for those who are able to see your site), please get in touch.

Introducing SeeHearSurf accessibility audits and web design

As this is my first ever venture into the world of blogging, I'd like to say a big "hello" to the blogging community - HELLO! Longer term, I intend to use this blog to offer my thoughts and opinions on all things web design and maybe some things from the larger world too. For this first blog though, forgive me if I get into a sales pitch - I'm just very excited about my new project!

Here at Dreamberry, we have some very exciting news: this week saw the launch of our new accessibility project, SeeHearSurf. Dreamberry have long been advocates of web accessibility. This project takes our advocacy one step further and sees us offering web accessibility consultancy and site audits as well as our own high standard of accessible web design.

With the ratification of the WAI's somewhat controversial WCAG-2.0 accessibility standards expected in December, web accessibility is likely to be in the news in the near future. Getting ahead of the curve can only be a good thing for your website: among the many benefits of accessible web design are increased usability for all, improved search ranking and reaching a potential 650 million extra customers worldwide.

There's more exciting news to come, but I'll tell you about that nearer the time...