What is Elementor Accessibility?

An accessible Elementor website is one that can be easily accessed and understood by all visitors, including people with disabilities or impairments. This means using tools or technologies that make the Internet easier to use for everyone.

Elementor and web accessibility also involves following specific design principles to ensure that users with special needs can also use the site without difficulty.

What is ADA Compliance?

ADA compliance refers to adherence to the Americans with Disabilities Act's Standards for Accessible Design. These standards require that all areas of public life, including websites, be made equally accessible to all people, especially those with disabilities.

Although website compliance is not explicitly stated in the ADA guidelines, websites are considered part of public life. Therefore, website owners can follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 to ensure compliance.

There are four main factors to consider when building an Elementor website:

• Content must be visible Users study and absorb your site's content visually, including text size, fonts, page layout, and colors. However, for users with impairments, websites must offer other ways to engage them. Make sure to add headings or subheadings to various media elements and use a combination of screen reader (text-to-speech) features that can help convert text to audio and provide a great user experience.
• Content should be easy to understand Website content should be easy to read, understand and navigate. This includes the use of appropriate font sizes, styles and color contrast to improve readability; simple language to ensure comprehension; and clean and clear website design for easy navigation. Multimedia elements such as images and videos can also be added to enhance the understanding and appeal of the content.
• The user interface should be functional Users will access your website through different devices, screen sizes, and hardware components such as a mouse or keyboard. Therefore, the site should accommodate as many users as possible, making it easy for them to navigate and interact with it, no matter what device they are using. For example, give users enough time to read a confirmation message before the page reloads; support easy navigation through site search or skip navigation links. This helps create a fully functional and fluid website.
• The website or web application must be reliable The website should adapt to different operating systems and browsers to accommodate a large number of users. This can be achieved by using the right tools and techniques during the development phase. Also, support a certain limit of outdated browser versions and validate the website against technical standards (e.g. CSS standards) to ensure that it works properly.

How to Improve Elementor Accessibility

With Elementor, you can take advantage of the built-in accessibility improvement features, which automatically help improve the accessibility of your website.

In addition to this, there are a variety of other ways to make your Elementor website more accessible. Below is an Elementor web accessibility checklist to help you design great websites:

• Font families and sizes

Choose the right font family and size to suit a wider audience and different screen sizes. In Elementor, a large number of font types can be accessed through the site theme, font sizes can be pre-configured, and even the font size of individual pages can be changed. The fonts you choose should have good readability, appropriate thickness, and the right height and width to improve accessibility of your content. Consider using the 16px font size that is the default for most browsers, and set the REM unit to allow users to scale the font proportionally on their device.

• Ensure proper color contrast

Color contrast is the difference between the background and foreground colors. Color contrast is just as important as fonts in order to make your website readable and accessible.

Follow the WCAG guide to select the correct color combination, make sure the opacity is set to 100%, and use the Background Overlay widget in Elementor to darken the background so the text stands out.

• Adding text labels to a form

If your site has a contact form or signup form, make sure the form fields and other elements have text labels so everyone can use them easily.

Want to try more font styles? Check out how to add custom fonts to Elementor to enhance the aesthetics and content of your website.

• Adding Alt Attributes to Images

Images and other media elements should be accompanied by captions and alt attributes (alt tags) to provide visually impaired users with another way to access the content.

Not only will this help visually impaired users access content through screen readers, but it will also improve your website's SEO in image results.

To add alternative text to a visual element, click Image in the Styles tab to add alternative text, a caption, and a description in the Media window.

• Make your design responsive

In this digital age, it is vital to create a highly interactive and responsive website. Considering that users access websites through different devices, it is important to create responsive designs.

Gather data on the screen sizes most commonly used by visitors and create layouts for the different sizes accordingly. Use smaller text, multiple columns, and sufficient row height on larger screens, and hidden navigation options, larger text, and single-column content on smaller screens.

Elementor's Responsive Mode feature allows you to see how your website will look on different screen sizes. Simply click on the Responsive Mode icon at the bottom of the Elementor menu to view the page.

• Add ARIA Tags

ARIA tags can improve the accessibility of Elementor by providing more information about an element. For example, ARIA tags can be added to highlight buttons or checkboxes, or to show whether an element is enabled or not.

This allows visually impaired people to understand the various elements on the website and enhances the inclusiveness of the website experience.

• Contact form

Scaling fonts using REM sizing is a great way to enhance the accessibility of your contact form.The REM unit scales the font size relative to the size of the root element, ensuring that the font remains consistent and readable across different screen sizes.

Considering that many visitors with disabilities use their keyboards to navigate the site, make sure you use the Tab key to easily navigate between form fields. If you use Elementor's Form Widget, it handles this functionality by default.

• Keyboard navigation support

To ensure that Elementor is ADA compliant, your site must also support keyboard navigation.

Keyboard navigation and shortcuts are supported on the website and apps, making it not only easier for users with disabilities, but also providing a faster way for all users to interact.

• Using HTML5 Semantic Elements

HTML5 provides useful semantic elements such as