If you are looking for a WordPress Accessibility plugin for your website, you are in a good place.
Nowadays, users have access to a wide selection of tools to help them meet the challenges of accessibility. Using the right WordPress accessibility plugin gives you the possibility to improve the usability and accessibility of your website.
Listed best WordPress WCAG plugins for sure will make your web page much easier to perceive, understand, and navigate, especially if you are using it for a quick, easy-to-implement WCAG solution.
Why use WordPress accessibility plugins?
According to the CDC, 61 million adults in the United States are living with some form of disability. That means that 1 in 4 Americans may have a difficult time accessing and navigating your website if it’s not accessible for all. On top of that, websites are starting to run into legal trouble for not being compliant with the standards put in place by The American Disabilities Act (ADA). So not only could you be losing business for not having a truly accessible website, but it could end up costing you much more than making your website accessible ever would.
With the help of high-quality accessibility WCAG 2.1 plugins, it’s much easier to improve the accessibility of your website, especially if you do not have the technical or programmatic skills to make HTML and CSS improvements by yourself. Choose a plugin, install it and benefit from without touching the code.
List of the best tools to increase accessibility
DJ-Accessibility - recommended
DJ-Accessibility plugin is a set of tools to help people with disabilities navigate the site. You can easily display accessibility options in a pop-up or toolbar on your page.
DJ-Accessibility WCAG plugin works with Joomla and WordPress! It's also integrated with the YOOTheme Pro Builder.
The tool in a simple and easy way will increase accessibility on your website. Installing and configuring this plugin will not take more than 5 minutes! Just install and activate the plugin.
Main features include smart contrast, keyboard navigation, mobile-friendly, customizable icon, changing the typo (font size, line height, and letter spacing).
DJ-Accessibility is a free WCAG solution but also comes with an advanced pro version (the commercial version includes a toolbar options display method, screen reader, and more features).
WP Accessibility
WP Accessibility plugin is a 100% free tool, purposed to resolve common accessibility problems in WordPress themes and websites. It offers a set of accessibility features, requiring minimal setup.
The most important features are: skip links (let screen reader users jump to different parts of a page), ability to place a customizable outline around focusable elements, the possibility to specify the language of the page (for screen reader pronunciation), adding long image descriptions (for example for charts and graphs), post titles to “read more links” and more.
WP Accessibility Helper
WP Accessibility Helper is purposed to improve content visibility and content navigation, delivering featured needed to change the font size, contrast and color variations, titles and aria-label tags, images alt and similar. You can also remove styles and animations from a page with a click of a button.
This plugin also comes with a premium version offering more features.
Accessibility by UserWay
UserWay’s Accessibility Widget is a popular free widget purposed to provide businesses an accessibility solution and make basic accessibility adjustments to your website.
It helps site owners improve accessibility by utilizing automation in WordPress without changing the website’s code. Users can control colors, contrast, keyboard navigation, desaturation, focus, and more. This plugin has a free version with limited features and several pro plans.
One Click Accessibility
The One Click Accessibility plugin is purposed to make your website more accessible.
It adds a number of helpful accessibility features without the need for advanced setup and programmatic skills. This plugin offers options like links underlining, setting grayscale, negative or high contrast effects, readable fonts maker, light background, and more.
Final Thoughts
There is a regular increase in widespread awareness of the importance of creating accessible websites.
Using the tools described above is a great way to add features to help users with limitations get the most out of their WordPress site. In addition to plugins, you should consider using ready-made WCAG themes, that will allow getting website accessibility with WCAG compliance that covers 508 & ADA standards.
Adapting the content of your website to the needs of disabled users (they make up almost 20% of users browsing the web) will help you get more users browsing your content. Other benefits include protection from potential penalties (if you are subject to adaptation laws) and easier access also for older users.
It is worth noting that in recent years, the availability of recommended sites has become common practice. And while not every country has accessibility laws,
most countries apply the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
All of the WordPress accessibility plugins mentioned in our list are free WCAG plugins or have free versions, so you can do some testing and see for yourself which one works best for you.
Remember that using WCAG / ADA plugins isn’t the only thing you can do to make your website’s content available to a larger audience.
The content of the blog post comes from the DJ-Extensions website: Best 5 WordPress WCAG Plugins