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The Secret Benefit Of Accessibility Part 2: A Higher Search Engine Ranking
readers. Equally, search engines can't access Flash so be sure to provide equivalents.

6. Transcripts available for audio

Hearing impaired users obviously require written equivalents for audio content to be able to access it. Search engines too can't access this medium, but transcripts provide them with a large amount of text for them to index.

7. Site map provided

Site maps can be a useful tool for visually impaired users as they provide a straightforward list of links to the main pages on the site, without any of the fluff in between.

Site maps are also great for search engines as search engines can instantly index your entire site when they arrive at the site map it. Next to each link you can also provide a short keyword-rich preview of the page. All links should, of course, be made through regular HTML and not through JavaScript (see 4. above).

8. Meaningful page title

When we arrive at web pages the first thing that appears, and the first thing that visually impaired users hear, is the page title. This latter group of web users don't have the privilege of being able to quickly scan the page to see if it contains the information they're after, so it's essential that the page title effectively describes the page content.

If you know anything about search engine optimisation you'll know that the page title is the most important attribute on the page. If it adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about.

9. Headings and sub-headings used

Visually impaired web users can scan web pages by tabbing from heading to heading, in addition to tabbing from link to link (see 3. above). As such, it's important for accessibility to make sure that headings are correctly marked up by using h1, h2 etc.

Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings describe the content immediately below them. Make sure you use the heading tags properly and don't abuse them, as the more text you have contained in heading tags, for example, the less importance search engines assign to them.

10. CSS used for layout

Screen readers can more effectively work through the HTML code of CSS-based sites as there's a greater ratio of content to code. Websites using CSS for layout can also be made accessible to in-car browsers, WebTV and PDAs. Don't underestimate the importance of this - in 2008 alone there'll be an estimated 58 million PDAs sold worldwide (source: http://www.etforecasts.com/pr/pr0603.htm).

Search engines also prefer CSS-based sites and are likely to score them higher in the search rankings because:

• The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines
  

• Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document
  

• There is a greater density of content compared to coding
  

Conclusion

With all this overlap between web accessibility and search engine optimisation there's no excuses for not implementing basic accessibility on to your website. It'll give you a higher search engine ranking and therefore more site visitors.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

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