Accessibility’s Role in Your Law Firm Website Health

Date: August 1, 2024

If your law firm is hoping to see real business growth this year, but your website is seeing low traffic or traffic that doesn’t linger on the site, you may need to consider improving your website health. Keeping your pages regularly updated with consistent maintenance, new content, and up-to-date optimizations is the best way to ensure your firm is accessible for the right people in the search results. With a few adjustments based on ADA requirements and SEO best practices, you can take your firm’s site from unnavigable to accessible and booming with potential new clients. 

What is Website Accessibility?

When we talk about website accessibility, it is primarily referencing your site’s ease of use for those with disabilities or impairment of the senses. Small actions taken on your part make the Internet a more inclusive space for those who are blind, are hard of hearing or deaf, live with cognitive disabilities, and more. Things like adding alt text to the images on your site, including captions or transcriptions for any embedded videos, and ensuring all font styles are legible with clear contrast are simple ways to make browsing your firm’s site an easier and more accessible process. 

Going hand in hand with this are general best-practices for an accessible site, usually concerning the SEO choices made by web developers, brand managers, and marketing partners. Continually monitoring for broken links, updating meta tags, and optimizing for mobile devices will not only make your site easier to navigate, but also easier for potential clients to find with a simple Google search.

Why Does Website Accessibility Matter?

From a humanitarian perspective, website accessibility is a crucial measure for making the Internet and its resources attainable for everyone, regardless of the physical barriers they may face. In the U.S., the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects these groups with various legal standards, requiring online sites to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust in order for all visitors to receive the same experience when navigating digital resources. If your website doesn’t meet the necessary requirements, you run the risk of facing legal fees, a possible settlement, and the additional costs of rebuilding your site to be compliant.

Having an accessible website also has business benefits, however—the easier your firm’s web pages are to navigate, the more appealing and helpful you are to potential clients. Legible font, a quick-loading mobile page, and being on page one of a search engine results page are all indicators of a business with great website health and accessible pages. Implementing the simple edits recommended by the ADA, along with SEO best practices, will make your firm more present on the Internet and easier to browse for every visitor.

How to Improve Your Law Firm Website Accessibility

Continually monitoring your website health and staying up to date on ADA regulations are the baseline steps to optimizing your law firm site for accessibility. A website audit will show you areas of improvement for smoother running operations. This, along with some of the basic ADA suggestions, will set your law firm up for success online.  

1. Alt Text

Also known as alternative text or alt descriptions, this accessibility measure involves writing a description for every image on your website. For those who are blind or have other visual impairments, this text can be read aloud by various programs to provide a better understanding of what the image is depicting and what its purpose is on the page. It will also appear if an image fails to load, and is vital for providing search engines with details about your page content. Add alternative text to your site by building it into your code or utilizing the “Alt Text” field provided by your website’s CMS. 

2. Captioning and Transcripts

If your firm has any video content on its site, whether it be the history of your business or interviews with senior partners, there should be captions and a transcription to go along with it. This is again helpful for those with visual impairments, as it can be read aloud, but also for those with hearing impairments, as they are able to read along and gain the necessary context. Transcripts also aid search engines as they crawl your page, pinpointing the relevant keywords that will make your page soar to the top of SERPs.  

3. Legible Stylistic Choices 

To put your best digital foot forward as a firm, stick to consistent and legible branding choices across your website. This is especially relevant when it comes to the text on your pages. There are no exact ADA requirements regarding the type and color of website text, so stick to simple, unembellished fonts in a color that has significant contrast to the background. Text that is too small or has too-low contrast makes it difficult to read, and will eventually lead to the visitor leaving your page. Plus, having coordinated brand colors and fonts makes your firm look more cohesive and professional, which builds client trust before you even start the consultation.

4. Mobile Optimization

Mobile devices have become an integral part of our daily lives, so if you want your firm to be available in the palm of a future client’s hand, your site needs to be optimized for mobile use. In fact, thanks to Google’s mobile-first indexing process, your domain likely won’t pass an audit of your website health without being optimized for mobile use! Your firm is limiting its potential for growth without a mobile site, and cutting itself off from so many new business opportunities. Many content marketing or SEO firms offer website audits, where you can identify your site’s weak spots and learn how to improve upon them.

5. SEO Practices 

With a focus on SEO best practices, your firm will be more accessible on search engines than ever before. While they don’t inherently rely on each other, with the ADA having no regulations on SEO practices, and accessibility not being a ranking factor for search engines, improving one of these areas will help enhance the other. As mentioned, the inclusion of alt text and transcripts make your firm’s pages easier for Google to crawl and identify your content, and updating your meta tags and headers with appropriate keywords will get your site in front of the right people when they need it most. With this refined site experience, you should see more traffic, longer interactions, and flourishing website health.

How to Start Making Your Website Accessible

With these tips in mind, your firm is able to move forward with any necessary ADA adjustments or SEO updates to improve its website health. However if your team is maxed out, or if you just want to put your business growth in the hands of a professional, contact us today to learn more about our SEO and digital marketing services.