ADA, WCAG, Section 508 Accessibility and hidden text
-
I am working on fixing accessibility issues on client's site, and they have contracted with a vendor who provides both tools to monitor the site and consulting to help us fix issues that are found.
When there are spatial relationships between elements on a page that would be not be evident to someone listening via a screen reader, a strategy that they recommended to us to is to add text helpers that are not visible, but still read by the screen readers.
An example:
Directions to our Fifth Avenue Store
I have seen this technique used on a major brand site but I am concerned that their brand strength insulates them from a hidden text penalty far more than my client's brand would. Also, their implementation uses class names like "ada_hidden" which may help search engines understand the intent, or may not at all.
I am looking for opinions regarding the use of this technique. Normally I wouldn't use it for risk of penalty, but here the intent is to improve the user experience of the pages.
Anyone used similar techniques for ADA/WCAG, or solved the problem in a more SEO-friendly way?
Thanks,
Will
-
Wow, interesting question. I am with you I would definitely worry about obfuscated text penalties (keyword stuffing) employing that particular method. I have no experience with these guidelines but I am interested in what others have to say about the matter.
My initial though would be something like
Directions
Under the assumption that a speech reader would read alt text since users wouldn't see the image. And of course the image could be something completely simple like an arrow or bullet point.
I will wait to see what others may say,
Good luck,
Don
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Image Size in Alt Text
Hi, On our ecommerce site, when we load an image for an item, it automatically loads different sizes for that image. (i.e. High Res, Large, Small, Thumbnail, etc). We have an option to add the size to the alt text of the image (in addition to the description of the picture... so for example "Blue casual shirt High Res"... is this necessary? One of our clients requested this and I am not sure I see the point of having the image size in the alt text unless it helps the visually impaired in some way?
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Identify hidden content + Question of impact
I have a client that had a web agency which systematically implemented hidden content. Is there a tool that will compare source content vs what is readable on from the browser? Otherwise, can you recommend articles that focus on doing this? What are the impact on hidden content these days? Another client had hidden content on the first page and when we took over them they were ranking nr 2 with the home page on their brand name (nr 1 with a sub page). We have checked the link profile with Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz and nothing spammy comes up so I doubt it is Penguin related.
Technical SEO | | OscarSE0 -
How to stop google from indexing specific sections of a page?
I'm currently trying to find a way to stop googlebot from indexing specific areas of a page, long ago Yahoo search created this tag class=”robots-nocontent” and I'm trying to see if there is a similar manner for google or if they have adopted the same tag? Any help would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Iamfaramon0 -
Changing the anchor text of a big amount of links at once is bad for SEO?
Hi there, Our service at fotograf.de is a shopsystem for professional photographers. The customers can build their own website with our tool including an onlineshop to sell their pictures. We have a lot of links from our customers linking to our homepage. The links come from subdomains of our domain and from external domains. We are now thinking about changing the anchor text of half of the links (round about 300.000 links). Do we have to fear a penalization of Google for changing so many anchor texts at once? Do we get better rankings if we choose a more optimized anchor text or does this have no effect because most of the links are from subdomains (each customer has its own subdomain) of our domain? Thanks for answering! Sebastian
Technical SEO | | Sebastian230 -
INTERNAL ANCHOR TEXT LINKS
If your site has say 50 pages, and you have a anchor text link from the home page to that page, what should you do in response to last friday, I have 60 keywords in the top 10 and now thye are all in the top 30 at best. PAGE RANK is still 5s and 6s on all of these pages.... NO PROBLEM ON THIS SITE UNTIL LAST FRIDAY!
Technical SEO | | jdcline0 -
Inbound anchor text?
I have 5 keywords that I would like to target. I have created & optimised 5 pages on my website for these words. (1 keyword optimised per page) Should I inbound keyword anchor text to my specific pages or hit the home page with the anchor text?
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Similar category names result in similar urls and duplicate anchor texts
Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce website about car tuning and car parts. There are main categories like ( Aerodynamics, Power tuning, Interior, Wheels, Tires, etc. ) and in the products are organized in sub-categories representing the product manufacturer, car manufacturer and car model + modification. Unfortunately this kind of structure creates duplicate sub-category names. For example we can have parts for Audi A4 8K in Aerodynamics and ABT, and the same time we can have Power tuning from the same manufacturer and for the same car, or Sport brakes for the same car by different manufacturers. So here are how some links look-like: /alfa-romeo-147-c1070-en /alfa-romeo-147-c234-en /alfa-romeo-147-c399-en These are totally different categories, with the same anchor text and almost the same url addresses ( the only difference in the urls is the category id ). Can this be affecting the site's indexation, and which can be the better way to create the internal link structure ?
Technical SEO | | mdimov0 -
Site links -> anchor text and blocking
1.Does anyone know where google pulls that anchor text for the organic site links? -- Is there a way to manipulate the anchor text of the sitelinks to get our more important pages to stick out more (capitalization, punctuation etc.) 2. If i block a few of my sitelinks from showing will goolge replace it with a new sitelink or will i be left with fewer? Thanks! Srs
Technical SEO | | Morris770