SEO Can Assist Your Site for the Visually Impaired
This week Target.com lost its law suit made by the National Federation of the Blind. The core of the suit is that Target's website is not accessible to the blind. If you select 'control+A' on your keyboard at the site you will see it is mostly images. As large corporations have large budgets they expect a lot of direct searches. For smaller sites competing with them this is a benefit as SEO can take advantage of this. With this ruling all sites will need to take into consideration the needs of the visually impaired.
Had Target taken into account what the search engine webmaster help files tell you to do, they may have not been sued by the National Federation of the Blind. One of the first pieces of information the search engines volunteer is be sure all text you want indexed by the search engines is outside of text. Just as the search engines can't read text in a graphic, neither can the text readers the blind use. Also, alt tags were designed for the purpose of helping the blind to know what an image is; "a boat, a car, a bird, etc." Now, as we all know alt tags can help with SEO. But, anything used too much can have the search engines penalize your site and therefore your rankings.
Does this mean your alt tags go to waste? Well no. If you describe what's in the image, like a product for example, you're most likely going to use keywords anyway. Stay honest to your site and your visitors, don't overuse the same words, and you will still get the benefits of the search engines. You will also be helping open your site to a visually impaired market that Target overlooked. Here's a quote from Bruce Sexton Jr., president of the California Association of Blind Students, who filed the suit in conjunction with the National Federation of the Blind. "What I hope is that Target and other online merchants will realize is how important it is to reach 1.3 million people in this nation and the growing Baby Boomer population who will also be losing vision."
Remember, the search engines like text! And so will the 1.3 million potential customers that can't see your beautiful graphics.
Had Target taken into account what the search engine webmaster help files tell you to do, they may have not been sued by the National Federation of the Blind. One of the first pieces of information the search engines volunteer is be sure all text you want indexed by the search engines is outside of text. Just as the search engines can't read text in a graphic, neither can the text readers the blind use. Also, alt tags were designed for the purpose of helping the blind to know what an image is; "a boat, a car, a bird, etc." Now, as we all know alt tags can help with SEO. But, anything used too much can have the search engines penalize your site and therefore your rankings.
Does this mean your alt tags go to waste? Well no. If you describe what's in the image, like a product for example, you're most likely going to use keywords anyway. Stay honest to your site and your visitors, don't overuse the same words, and you will still get the benefits of the search engines. You will also be helping open your site to a visually impaired market that Target overlooked. Here's a quote from Bruce Sexton Jr., president of the California Association of Blind Students, who filed the suit in conjunction with the National Federation of the Blind. "What I hope is that Target and other online merchants will realize is how important it is to reach 1.3 million people in this nation and the growing Baby Boomer population who will also be losing vision."
Remember, the search engines like text! And so will the 1.3 million potential customers that can't see your beautiful graphics.
posted by Brian H at
9:39 AM
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