my latest column for MediaPost’s Search Insider:

Accessibility’s Impact on Search

by Rob Garner, Wednesday, Sep 13, 2006 1:45 PM ET
LAST FRIDAY, A FEDERAL DISTRICT court judge ruled that the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) may file a class action suit against a major retailer with a strong e-commerce presence. The claim is that the company’s Web site lacks the basic coding attributes that are required to enable blind customers to access the site. The NFB also claims that the company violates California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, The California Disabled Persons Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The impact of this case ruling could change the way every corporation and designer approaches Web development in the future. Ironically, the attributes required for blind customers are similar to the tactics long touted by good natural search optimizers. 

The NFB’s complaints against the retailer’s design include “lack of alt-text on graphics,” “inaccessible image maps,” “lack of adequate labeling” and “lack of navigation links.” The NFB also asserts that under the California Civil Code, this company is a public place, and that the company is “violating the right of blind persons to full and equal access to public places by denying full and equal access to its website.” The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) promoted by the W3 Consortium is cited as the standard for Web site accessibility compliance. 

While the debate about mandatory compliance heatedly continues between business owners and disability advocates, there is another question from the search strategy perspective: Why did this company omit these basic design elements? Doing so not only limits accessibility, but decreases performance on search engines.

Search design flaws on parade

While the company asserts that it has designed the site within all applicable laws, it is difficult to understand why it omitted key design attributes at the expense of search engine visibility and sales. The e-commerce industry is extremely competitive in both paid and natural search, and to most e-commerce marketers, the use of alt-text on images and image maps is Search Engine Optimization 101. By not using the basic design tactics used by many of its competitors, this ecommerce retailer is being left in the dust.

In addition to leaving out image alt-text, it has also omitted semantic markup elements in the page headers, which would allow search engines to better understand the major theme of each page. In less technical terms: it is not labeling pages properly.

Good accessibility principles lead to good search design principles

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