Intentive specializes in the implementation of accessible websites and web applications. Since 2017, we have carried the “BIK 95 Plus” seal and are listed as a “recommended agency for the implementation of particularly accessible websites”.
Accessibility is a central topic for social reasons and, since the European Accessibility Act (EAA), for legal reasons as well. But easy access to information also plays an important role from an economic point of view: in 2023, 9.3% of people in Germany were severely disabled. This group of people therefore has significant economic power, and is also a target group for digital services.
When implementing accessible online services, visual, content-related and structural aspects must be taken into account to ensure a positive user experience for all users. In addition to navigation and content structure, contrasts, colors, scalability and linearization, aspects such as focus management, comprehensibility, text alternatives and structure are important topics that we consider in early conceptual phases. By choosing the right compromises, we are able to keep barrier-free offers attractive for people without special needs as well.
In addition, search engines also “understand” barrier-free pages better: their crawlers index the text of a page, which leads to an intersection of on-page optimization and accessibility. If the accessibility of all relevant content has been ensured, e.g. through W3C-compliant markup, valid structuring and additional information such as ALT texts and ARIA attributes for visually impaired people in a braille display, the search engine crawler will not “stumble” over barriers either. The paradigms for accessible web design are therefore also worthwhile for search engine rankings.
