How to Make Your WordPress Website Accessible with accessiBe

The importance of making your website accessible is undeniable. AccessibilityAccessibilityThe practice of designing and developing websites that can be easily accessed and used by individuals with disabilities.
More About Accessibility should be a priority from the start when designing and developing a website. Ever since WordPress 6.0 released date, ensuring all visitors, regardless of their abilities, have equal access to your site has become one of the major considerations for web developers worldwide. Moreover, adhering to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and WCAGWCAGA series of guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities.
More About WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) has become necessary for websites, ensuring your site is discoverable and usable for all. According to estimates provided by the World Health Organization, over a billion people worldwide have some form of disability. Many tools are available to help you improve your WordPressWordPressOpen-source content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites and blogs.
More About WordPress website accessibility, including the accessiBe WordPress pluginPluginA piece of software that can be easily installed and activated on a CMS platform to enhance its capabilities.
More About Plugin, which we are going to review today.

Disclaimer: This review was written in association with accessiBe.

What is accessiBe?

AccessiBe is a web accessibility platform offering tools and features to help you make your website accessible to a broader range of users, including the ones with certain disabilities. Web development regulations and online accessibility standards rapidly change and modify. Ensuring that your website meets all accessibility standards and provides an inclusive browsing experience to all users is an effort- and time-consuming process. accessiBe covers most of the tasks related to maintaining your website’s accessibility and compliance with the evolving legal and regulatory standards. 

Eager to gain deeper insights into improving web accessibility? Consider checking out a guide on how to make a WordPress website accessible.

Does accessiBe Work with WordPress? 

accessiBe is designed to work on websites running on diverse platforms and CMSCMSA content management system is software aiding users to create, manage, and modify website content.
More About CMS, including WordPress. The ADA compliance WordPress plugin uses an AI scanner to analyze your website and understand its elements and functionality, which can be adjusted for the end users’ screen readers. It uses AI to optimize your website for complex requirements, like applying keyboard navigation adjustments.  Besides, the plugin supports multiple UI and design adjustments, from content to display, ensuring your website delivers an optimal user experience tailored to your audience’s needs. 

accessiBe is a beginner-friendly solution that doesn’t require you to modify a single line of code to be modified. It installs and activates on your website in seconds. Using a 7-day free trial, you can try how the WordPress accessibility plugin works yourself. Premium plans start at $49/per month. 

We have decided to check how the WordPress website accessibility plugin works and share the following step-by-step accessiBe setup and configuration instructions with you. 

How to Install accessiBe on WordPress 

accessiBe offers a straightforward procedure for installing the WordPress accessibility plugin. For example, when adding any other plugin, use your website’s admin dashboard, click “Add New Plugin,” and type accessiBe in the search bar. Then, install and activate the plugin on your website. 

To ensure the plugin will work smoothly on your website, you must create an account on accessibe.com and register your site’s domain.

Once the plugin is activated, a tooltip will appear next to the settings menu in the left sidebarSidebarA vertical column that appears alongside the main content, providing additional information, links, or widgets that are relevant to the main content.
More About Sidebar, asking you to configure the accessiBe plugin. 

Using the accessiBe settings menu, you can design and customize the button as you want it to appear on your site, including the Accessibility Statement Link, content, fonts, colors, buttons, and interface position. You can also add a customized installation script.

The plugin adds a widget with a nice interface to your website, offering easy setup features for the end user. Thus, customers can choose the best accessibility profile and adjust content, colors, orientation, etc. 

Users can also highlight titles and links on your website using the widget settings. More importantly, accessiBe provides the Text Magnifier feature by enabling users to enlarge the text on your website by hovering over it. 

For example, here’s how the Text Magnifier feature works: 

How accessiBe Works on WordPress

The plugin works with all WordPress websites and themes with proper markup. The script adds extra HTMLHTMLThe fundamental language used to create and structure content on web pages.
More About HTML markup on the front-end side (in the user browserBrowserA software application that enables you to view and interact with websites.
More About Browser). For example – the headings. If it isn’t marked with an H3 tag (<h3>) or role=“heading”, it won’t be highlighted. So basically, this script is universal unless you have poor or substandard HTML markup. 

If you need help with your website markup to fit the standards and make the script work, feel free to rely on the professional help delivered by IT Monks. There is nothing impossible for our expert web development team. Whenever you need qualified assistance with development or the services from your monthly website maintenance checklist, we are willing to assist you. 

accessiBe’s Impact on WordPress Website Performance

We wondered how the accessiBe plugin affects your Google site performance after installation. We ran a speed test and discovered that the script had a slight impact.

For comparison, here are PageSpeed results without the script running:

With script:

More from accessiBe – a Glimpse at accessServices 

The accessiBe dashboard offers additional services and tools to make your website more accessible. Thus, accessiBe lets you start separate projects for accessServices, which include the following: 

• Media accessibility adds a transcript to the video content, thus making it more accessible and improved for SEOSEOSearch Engine Optimization involves optimizing various website elements to make it more attractive to search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
  More About SEO. 
• File accessibility offers a semi-automated process for adding necessary elements to PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, and other files.
• If you receive federal funding from or do business with the U.S. government, the VPAT team helps you get the VPAT you need and works with you to establish an effective, affordable, and timely VPAT protocol.
• User Testing solution helps you double-check your website’s accessibility for users with disabilities. 
• accessWidget Inspection lets you verify that your website runs smoothly and learn when additional accessibility improvements should be made to optimize it further. 

Expert Audit provides a comprehensive line-of-code-by-line-of-code (LxL) analysis that helps you understand your site’s accessibility status. At the end of the scan, you get a PDF report that you can download to view the audit results in detail.

Make Your WordPress Website Accessible

After installing the plugin, tweaking its settings, and testing the website’s performancePerformanceRefers to how fast a website or web application loads and responds to user interactions.
More About Performance after launching the script, we have concluded that accessiBe is a lightweight solution that does not affect your website’s performance in any way. It might have some issues with unprofessional customized themes or markup, but generally, it’s easy to install and use — fast and efficient.

If you need professional help with your website, whether improving its overall performance, enhancing it with a better design, or applying custom-made adjustments to any of its sections, contact the IT Monks team without hesitation. We are always willing to improve your site!