Small Business Growth Addicts | Top Social Media & Marketing Podcast for Small Business Owners

Make Your Website Accessible: Simple Fixes for Small Businesses

• Amanda Hughes • Episode 40

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If your website or socials are hard to read, you’re losing customers. 

In this episode, accessible web & brand designer Rachel Mess shows small-business owners exactly how to make their websites and content more inclusive so more people can actually buy from you.

We cover, in plain English:

  • What “accessible web & brand design” means for small businesses
  • The 3 biggest blockers hurting your conversions: colour contrast, too-small text, and missing alt text
  • How screen readers work (and why “click here” links and label-less forms fail your users)
  • Easy, fast wins you can DIY on Wix / Squarespace / WordPress
  • Fonts, layout, and social posts that more people can read (and act on)

Why listen: Inclusive design isn’t just “nice to have” it’s good business and good basic humanness. Make your site easier to navigate, your content easier to read, and your offers easier to buy.

Links & Resources: Full show notes, tools mentioned, and guest/social links are at smallbusinessgrowthaddicts.com

Guest:
Find Rachel Mess at The Inclusive Design Company

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by KM Tax Returns monthly check-ins so you always know your numbers and stay on top of tax. Learn more at kmtaxreturns.co.uk.

  • Connect with Amanda on Instagram: @amandahughes.uk
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SPEAKER_03:

Hi, hello, welcome. I'm Amanda Hugh, your host of Small Business Good Addicts. I escaped the corporate world after 12 months of a side bustle which turned into my full-time income. Fast forward 10 years and I'm running not my first but my second small business. And this time around it's with a passion to share all that I know, all that I've learned and all that I'm still learning with fellow small business ownership. As the title of the show suggests, I am addicted to growing my business and I know you are too. Growth means different things to different people though, and that's why we talk about a whole foot subject in growth addicts. Whether that's not solo episode, just me and with one of my many autumn guests. Between us we shared advice, tips, and real-life entrepreneurial experience. To grab a pen, a cover and a biscuit, obviously, and get ready to grow that small business of yours. This is Small Business Growth Addicts. Hello and welcome to another episode of Growth Addicts. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today I have Rachel Mess with me today, and honestly, this conversation I would just challenge you not to listen to it and want to go and make changes today because I did literally as soon as I hung up with Rachel on this conversation, I emailed her straight away to ask her to have a look at my website for me. Rachel is an accessible web and brand designer. Based in Glasgow, she specialises in showing small business owners how they can make simple updates to their branding, their website, their social media to make it more inclusive. And that's inclusive of everybody, regardless of age, race, physical ability, visual ability, everything, to make sure that your website, your content is accessible for everybody. And like I said, I would defy you to listen to this and not want to go and make that possible if it's not already possible within your content. So without further ado, let's dive into this conversation with Rachel. Let's pause there for a second to hear a word from our sponsor.

SPEAKER_00:

Tired of only hearing from your accountant once a year. Hi, I'm Kirstine at KM Tax Returns. We check in monthly so you always know your numbers, stay on top of tax, and avoid end-of-year stress. Find out more at kmtaxreturns.co.uk.

SPEAKER_03:

How are you today?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm very good. How are you?

SPEAKER_03:

Good, I'm grand. And so, of course, today we're going to be talking about everything accessible, web design, and a brand design. And honestly, I've been so looking forward to this conversation, as I am with all the podcast episodes, but this is one I'm really open to learning about personally as well. My son has a visual impairment, so this does mean a lot to me personally to understand this more. So thank you so much for joining us to talk to us about this. I think it's something as small business owners we don't know enough about. So let's just kick straight off. Can you just tell us in plain, no jargon, layman's terms, what does accessible web brand design even mean?

SPEAKER_01:

So basically it is all about just designing and building like your website and your brand out so that it is accessible to anyone, regardless of like age, disability, computer literacy, anything like that. You basically don't want any barriers on your website that if somebody pops along and if they've got, say, got a visual impairment or if they're just older and their computer literacy isn't as high, or things like that, they go onto your website and it's confusing or it's hard to read, or if it's somebody who uses a screen reader and it's not being built, that somebody using that screen reader can actually like navigate and understand the content, then they're going to leave your website and potentially then go to a competitor. Obviously, as a business, that's not something we want to be doing. But then just as like people, hopefully we don't want to be doing that anyway. We want our businesses to be really inclusive and to welcome everybody like into our spaces and our communities.

SPEAKER_03:

Couldn't agree more. And you know, you mentioned something there that I hadn't even thought of. Age. My father-in-law is 70-something. What's he 74? He's been looking into pension stuff recently. I think he's got some old pensions he's trying to track and trace and whatnot. And the letters they're sending out is all log online, go online to access this. And he he hasn't a clue where to start, you know. He's got an iPad for FaceTiming the kids primarily. That's about it. And so he's bringing them up to me. And I must admit, some of them I've even struggled with, and I'm very, I think, computer literate. That's it.

SPEAKER_01:

And like I think these processes are so they make them kind of overly complicated, or systems aren't talking to each other. It's all different companies, and it is confusing. And my dad's actually, my dad's only 66, but he was just a sort of chronic, like anti-tech guy from like the get-go. If he ever needs to do anything online, I mean he'll turn around and be like, Rachel, can you go on that Google and find out?

SPEAKER_03:

You're like, Yeah, sure. I know. And of course, with you being in this line of work, you must get that a lot. Like you are Google, you are the internet.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and I do feel for him, I must admit, like, we joke, don't we? Like the you know, generations and whatnot. But if you don't know, you don't know. It's like a lot of small business owners using social media as well, for example, you know, uh depending on what generation you're in.

SPEAKER_01:

You you if you don't know, how do you know? And it has moved so quickly, it's not like previous generations where like a new machine or a new tool or something came out that had its own lifespan of like 30, 40, 50 years, and somebody would come in and they would learn this, and maybe the machine would have an upgrade or an improvement, but you'd had a long time to kind of get used to it. But I feel like technology has gone so quickly that anybody that was kind of slow into it, then it probably really quickly got quite overwhelming.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, absolutely. And of course, now we're introducing AI in the biggest way we've seen so far, and like, wow, that's a whole other layer altogether, isn't it? Yeah. What got you into this style of work then? Like, what made you realise how important accessibility is? It all kind of happened by accident.

SPEAKER_01:

Basically, I had studied UX design. I'd got a diploma in UX design, which is user experience, and I was designing my own website. I think what most business owners do. Like now, with like Squarespace and Wix, we can go on and create like our own brand and whatever. So I was using a different platform, but I'd gone, I'd picked like the colour that I liked the most and the fonts that I liked and all of that. It wasn't until it was finished my sister came and looked at it, and my sister's visually impaired. For some reason, doing this, she literally had it popped into my head at all. Like, I'm so used to thinking about her, like in like the physical worlds. If we go out for a meal, I'll read the menu. If we're in the shops, I'll find the aisle that we're looking for, find the thing, tell her how much it is. She's constantly on my mind when we're together and we're out somewhere. But I was in my own little design world here, and I was like throwing bits together and I was like, this looks great. And then she came up and told me all the things that she struggled to read on it. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I I'm so embarrassed. And I actually, because I was self-taught, like just through courses, I assumed that I'd been a complete idiot. And I was like, this is so obvious, everybody will obviously be doing this. So I really need to make sure that I know all of these things because I can't build a website for a business and it's not accessible, and then they can potentially lose sales because I've not like known that part of the trade. So then, really, as I started networking to kind of cover my own back, I was going, and I make sure it's all accessible, I make sure like I do all of these things, I check contrast levels and adult tags and all of these things. Nine out of ten business owners would be like, no one's ever mentioned that before. I don't know if our developers done this, or and then that really got me kind of seen how it's just not something most of us know about. So it kind of quite quickly became the thing that people would sort of think of me for.

SPEAKER_03:

So I would imagine then that's quite unique what you offer them, because I don't think I know anyone else who's as focused on the accessibility side of web design.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, there is definitely other agencies and other designers who do talk a lot about accessibility. I'm definitely not the only one, which is good because there's a lot of businesses out there who who I think as the more we have these conversations about like diversity and inclusion, maybe within the workspace, the more we kind of say, like, is that being seen throughout your whole brand from every contact point? Is it an inclusive brand for people to come across and get in touch with you and to engage with you online? I think it's becoming more and more of a conversation. So thankfully there are like a few of us, but you're right, not many. Like the majority of web designers in agencies, not that they don't do any of these checks, it's just not like a kind of founding principle, maybe is the best way to put it. And it's maybe more of a case of here's the things that we're meant to do, but I don't know, say like they really like a certain design, and if the client really likes a certain design, then it's maybe something they'll go, okay. Well, we can just do this, that's the one you prefer, we'll go with it. Whereas I think because I talk about it so much, and for the majority of like my clients, if there's a style that they like and it's not accessible, then we definitely have a conversation about that and we'll tweak it so that it is accessible because I'm just really not happy with like putting my name to something that is then not inclusive.

SPEAKER_03:

Good, and that's a really, really incredible value to have. Yep. Lots of respect for that. As you said at the start, just as humans, it's something we should all be striving for. Why wouldn't the earth would we want to knowingly exclude anyone from accessing our work? If you know me by now, you'll know that I love social media. It's how I've grown my businesses and now I want to help you do the same. That's why I created Get Seen Get Sales, my mentor group for small business owners who want to get seen online and actually attract followers that convert to customers. Inside, you'll get weekly content prompts, live workshops, and support on everything you need to grow confidently on social media. If you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or just ready to do things differently, I've got you. Head to smallbusinessgrowthaddicts.com to join us. With small business owner websites, a lot of them are DIY, aren't they? Especially at the start when you're starting up and the funds are not there and whatnot. So if you're looking at these sort of websites, what are the most sort of common barriers you see against accessibility and DIY, particularly websites?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, actually, just across all websites. There's actually a scan, uh kind of survey that's done every year by a company called WebAim, and they basically scan like a million websites. The biggest issue on all websites essentially is colour contrast, whether that's been a professionally designed and built website or a DIY. So colour contrast is always like the main thing.

SPEAKER_03:

Which does that mean exactly, Rachel, contrast?

SPEAKER_01:

So contrast is how easy is it for somebody to read text depending on the background colour. There's a lot of like contrast checkers. So when you are creating, if you're doing a DIY brand and website, when you're creating your colour palette, think about what color is the text going to be, what colour of backgrounds do I want. Say if you've got like a nice kind of brand colour, we'll use pink as an example because pink can actually be like quite a tricky colour depending on the shade. So if you've got a shade of pink and you know that you want that for like all of your buttons, you can go onto a contrast checker and you can get the colour codes and pop that in the little contrast checker, and then you can go right here and what colour am I going to use for my text? And put the colour of the text in the other box, and that will give you essentially like a score, and it'll tell you like, is this a high contrast colour or not? And if it's not, then you want to change that shade of pink that you're using.

SPEAKER_03:

So you want high contrast between the text and the background that makes it easier to read.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. And there's two levels. So there's double A and triple A. So double A is basically like minimum sort of standard, like everything should be.

SPEAKER_03:

And I think that because as I say, my son's got multiple disabilities, but he has a visual impairment. And when we're talking about contrast, it's usually on like stairs, for example. So when he first got diagnosed, and the VI visual impairment rehabilitation service came out to assess our full house and garden and the full environment, and our deck and stairs are all grey with no change whatsoever. And they were explaining how he would struggle to see the edge of the stairs. So we put on yellow and black tape on the edge of each stairs so he can see that. Like, you know, it's like yellow and black stripes, you know. So I guess that's then brings that more. So would he look at that? It might be quite flat, but that tape on it pops out. And then it works the same with the website, then pops that text out more.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's and especially with the fact that there's stripes there, like in a physical setting. Because if you think of say people that are colourblind, now you're fine as well because you've gone with like yellow and black. But if that was like a red tape, if somebody was colourblind and visually impaired or was suffering with sight loss, and then they could be walking up to that and like not see the red tape. So the fact that it's even got a stripe on it as well, then like creates that. But like yellow and white is obviously the reason why you see so much kind of yellow used within like safety things is because it's a high contrast colour with black.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, it's all about making that pop, then. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so you see issues with contrast. What else?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, text size is another big one, and I think that is definitely getting better, but I think it's still sort of very common from 90s, early 2000s, where like you would always use like size 12 in all of your documents, and then I think as that kind of transitioned into social media posts and website content. I mean, I know that I would kind of automatically be like, yeah, so like 12 pixels, because that's what we all used when we were doing Word documents and everything, but you want minimum of 16 pixels throughout all of your text on your website, so that's a little tip.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, yeah, that's a great tip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, other ones are alt tags on images. So there's kind of two sides to this. So an alt tag is a description of an image, so that if somebody is using a screen reader, then they get a description of what that image is. It's mostly important for if you've got any images that say are like a graph or percentages or anything that's informative, any sort of images there for like information purposes, then somebody that's using a screen reader, when they get to that image, it has to tell them what the contents of that image is. Otherwise, they'll just get the screen reader saying image or maybe like the image and then the file name or something, and they're literally not getting the information that's in there. The other thing is if you've got, say, particularly like a service-based business, if you're a hairdresser or an interior designer or an architect or something like that, if somebody who uses a screen reader is going on and they're looking for your service, and then they're going through the website and all it's saying is image, image, image, image, image, then they have no idea like what that is. And it probably just means that they end up like maybe asking somebody, do you know somewhere that I can go or somebody I can phone? Because I literally can't do any research on this because there's no descriptions on the images. It's just a shame basically, because there's so many people who will have like visual impairments and who do use screen readers. And maybe sight is one of those things as well that anyone can become blind or visually impaired through like just age, strokes, diabetes, anything like that. So you might have been like a really independent person, and then suddenly you're kind of not, and you're going like, I'm gonna find a hairdresser that I want to go to, or I'm gonna find a builder that I want to work with. And if you're going on and you're just getting that barrier of not being able to understand the visuals, that could just be like Yeah, not a great experience.

SPEAKER_03:

I have full use of my vision and I know how frustrating it is if I go on a website and I can't find what I'm looking for. I can't imagine not being able to see it properly and relying on that and just hearing image, image, image. I would be so annoyed.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's just something that I think so many of us don't think about because when you do have full sight, you just take it for granted. You do just take it for granted. Um it's just understandable, it's not something that's in your radar. It's just trying to make sure that those barriers aren't there for somebody because as businesses we want to create like a really good user experience for anyone that comes across our business.

SPEAKER_03:

And of course, it's like anything that's not great in the user experience, they will likely tell someone else about it.

SPEAKER_01:

And the opposite as well, within like the disabled, like a lot of disabled communities would say, but if say, so like my sister has albinism, there are albinism-specific groups where people will connect with each other and create friendships and recommend services and all of that. If they come across a service that was really inclusive and really easy to use and really easy to book, they'll go tell people that they know because they're like, I was just on this website and it was so easy to go on. You should if you need some, if you need this service, go and use this because it was such an easy website, and that's what we want people to be seeing.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. Now you've probably got more common mistakes or things that you see, you know, barriers you see, but could we just jump into actually what a screen reader is?

SPEAKER_01:

Somebody who's blind will use a screen reader software. JAWS is the kind of main one that I know. There is a second one that's fairly popular, but I always forget the name. But essentially it's a software that reads out content within your computer. So if you go to the start button, it'll tell you you're on the start button. It'll read everything out. Everything that we read on a computer screen, it will read that out to the person as they navigate their computer, the internet, social media, like everything.

SPEAKER_03:

Fantastic tool to have though, isn't it? And is it purely people who are completely blind who would use that?

SPEAKER_01:

You would need to have severe vision loss. There are softwares that have like a pretty kind of steep learning curve to them. So I've actually started working with a guy called Daniel who is blind. So now all of like my websites that I'm building, Daniel's gonna test them out for me, like using his screen reader, because I can't do it because it's too much sort of like time to try and learn this whole system as well. And he's there, he knows how to do it, he's very proficient. He's gone through school and university and his career using one. So absolutely happy to pay him to test things out for me. I can do all of the scans and do everything. I can think I'm doing absolutely everything right until somebody is actually running it through and physically testing it. It'll make sure everything's perfect.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a great thing to have someone there who can do that for you, is happy to offer that service for you. That's fantastic because then you're getting firsthand exactly what that user experience is like, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And I think you know, online scanners and testers are great and they will bring up kind of a lot, but it is just different than somebody navigating it themselves, they'll notice little blips.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, brilliant. Okay, great. So you've mentioned the um colour contrast and text size and alt tags, and then we'll talk about screen readers. Any other common accessibility issues you see?

SPEAKER_01:

This is really popular because and it absolutely came from simple minimalist sort of design trends, but it's so common to see contact forms where the field name is inside the text box instead of there being like a label above the text box. Basically, when that happens, that text that we're seeing inside is actually just like hint text for us. It's not supposed to be used for labeling the input field. So your first name, last name, email address, etc. So that's important for screen readers, screen reader users, because it will tell them contact form, input field, first name, and it will actually read that out to them. Whereas if there isn't that label, it won't read out the function of that first input field. And then it's also just kind of irritating. I feel like we've all been filling out a form where you start filling out a field and then you get distracted and somebody's asking you a question, and then you go back and you're like, what was I putting in here? And then you have to delete what you've typed to see what the hint text is to remember what details you were putting in, and then go again. That's another kind of really big common one is no labels on forms. Links, links, they're just like on websites. This is just really common. If you have, say, a click here to download this form or click here to go to this page. We're really used to seeing the word here is what the hyperlink is. So there's some people, if they have like a motor disability and they're not using a mouse or the keypad, they will actually use the tab button on a keyboard to navigate pages on the website. And if you're using the tab key, then that jumps you to all of the links on a page. So it'll take them to the link, but that link will just be the word here. It won't be click here to go to this page or click here to download this form. And that is when we're jumping people to a link, we want it to be super specific and really clear where here it's taking them to.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm listening to this and know I know fine well I've got things like that on my website.

SPEAKER_01:

Everyone does. Everyone does. So that's one of the things is like not to feel bad about it because we don't but we don't know what we don't know. And like I said, like I didn't know any of this until Hannah came up being like, eh, that's really hard to read, and so is that, and so is that. And I was like, oh my god. So I never want people to feel bad about it. Once you then know these things, then you can start to tweak them and fix them.

SPEAKER_03:

That's what we're here for.

SPEAKER_01:

They are pretty simple fixes.

SPEAKER_03:

We're doing this episode today, and you're listening to this episode today to learn. We don't know what we don't know. So, yeah, there's no shame, no feeling bad, no guilt. We're learning today, so that if there are any of these barriers, we can go and fix them. And Rachel's going to tell us next. Let's pause to hear from our sponsors today. Not only are our sponsors, awesome businesses themselves. They also enable me to keep providing the podcast with all the incredible information that it comes with for free for all of you.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you only hear from your accountant once a year? We don't think that's enough. At KM Tax Returns, we check in with you every single month. So you always know how your business is doing, what tax you'll owe, and how much to put aside. You've got the right numbers when you need them, which means easier decisions, no end-of-year panic, and more time to focus on running your business. No shock, stress or accounting headaches, just clear answers when you need them. So visit kmtaxreturns.co.uk to find out more about how we can help you. That's kmtaxreturns.co.uk.

SPEAKER_03:

Where do we start? Is there a way we can like go into our websites to sort of audit it?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. There are three scanners. So there's one called accessibilitychecker.org. That gives you like two scans per every 24 hours or something like that. You can go in and it'll give you a score. Now, I will say I've never seen it give a score higher than 95% because the checker basically wants you to sign up for their platform so that they can you can buy their plugin to then fix all the things. So it's never going to give you 100%, but that'll give you a score, and then below it will give you like the list of issues that it's found. There's also plugins for WebAim, and they'll scan it and tell you if images are missing alt tags, if you're missing things like heading levels, which is getting kind of like techgy and jargony. Yeah, that'll list everything out. I offer an audit service as well, which is£50, not to blow up my own trumpet too much. But at least with that, you're yet getting a video call with me, or you can opt for a pre-recorded video where I'm going on Loom and I'm going through everything, and I'll explain everything kind of clearly so that it makes sense. Whereas a lot of these like tech scanners will list everything, but it's not in plain English, and it'll be referencing bits of code, and when you're sitting there going, I haven't got to clue about this, that then makes it feel quite overwhelming and you don't know where to start. Whereas, at least with me, it's a person that's going like, Okay, so these are the issues, this is how you'll fix it, and I'll give you some like suggestions to say if it was for images that need alt tags, I'll just end up being like, say something like this, or say something like that, and it gives you a starting point.

SPEAKER_03:

That sounds good, Rachel. I think that's something I need. And I would much prefer to have someone like you do it, because as you say, they'll probably do that scan, that takes time, and then it'll give me a whole list of things that I'll just really probably not know where to go with.

SPEAKER_02:

And it almost makes you a bit frightened, you're almost just like, oh my god, like, oh, there's all of these things, what do I do? Shut my website down, just forget it. I know.

SPEAKER_01:

And a lot of the time it's like maybe like the same issue as you is across the website. So once you fix it once, it's so easy to then go and fix the rest of them. So usually it's not like a big deal.

SPEAKER_03:

If we're maybe thinking, if you're listening here and thinking like me, like I know I've definitely got join here, click here, that sort of thing. I must admit though, recently I use Wix for my website, and when I'm doing the SEO part, it does prompt me to add alt text and whatnot, which is great. It's got a little sort of list, just green and red ticks, so I can see at a glance what's missing. So that always prompts me to add alt text and whatnot. But I know there's plenty of previous blogs that won't have that. If that is the case and we know fine well, there's a few things we can pick. What would you say? What's the sort of top three to choose to go and fix today?

SPEAKER_01:

And and how? Top three I mistake is your contrast levels. That's actually the most annoying one of them because we tend to be very connected to our brand colours. When you're your own business and business owner and you've picked the colours, we are attached to them, and then it's used across your social media, across all of your marketing. It could be in your logo. If it gets to a point where you're changing logos, that's actually not a high priority for me. Like the logo function as it is, if that's going to be a lot of extra effort, you're kind of maybe if your main brand colour is a low contrast colour with your text. That's kind of like the biggest thing. And the one that I think some people are can be quite reluctant to touch because they're like, no, I really like it. And I get that, I do get it. But just as businesses, we also want to be like as accessible as possible. The low contrast, the alt tags, and labels on your forms, those are kind of the top three issues across websites. They're kind of like the top three accessibility issues across the internet. I would target those three first.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, and so alt tags, what are we actually writing? So, say it was a picture of me on a blog, for example, with headphones on. Am I describing that image exactly as?

SPEAKER_01:

That's actually a really good question because this is where we kind of get into how important is the image? So I think when it's photos of us as the Bits and Stoners, they're literally just there for decoration. I kind of like to do a sort of blended outlook on this. So if I was on your website and you had pictures of you on every page, then I would probably put descriptions on the home page. So I would describe you as Amanda is a white woman in her 40s with shoulder length, dark hair, she's at a coffee table writing in a notepad. So I would give a few descriptions like that on the home page. Once we get into pictures of you on the blogs, pictures of you on various pages, pictures of you throughout, somebody who's using a screen reader doesn't need to get constant descriptions.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that but that's a thought, isn't it? Like they don't want to open every page and have the same thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Literally, like it's not that deep. I like to have a few because again, just on the inclusion side, because somebody who can see is getting then an idea of your age, race, getting a kind of connection with you. I guess it depends maybe on the brand how important you think that that is. I think we all just like to have like a kind of visual idea of who we're working with. It makes the service more human when we can see the person. So if it is somebody who uses a screen reader, they can't see the person. So let's give them like a little description so they've got just a basic idea, but they don't need that description over and over and over again. I'm glad you asked that.

SPEAKER_03:

Because I think that sometimes I'm repeating it and I'm thinking, God, how would this sound if someone's listening to this? It'd be quite interesting actually to use a screen reader once to try it for myself to actually see what that experience is like.

SPEAKER_01:

All of our computers have got screen readers like built into them, so you can go into like your settings in the accessibility tab and you can activate a screen reader and go through. And you can listen to it.

SPEAKER_03:

That would be interesting actually. But just don't go and burn your website down, right? That's fixable. Okay. Don't do that. It's fine. Don't panic. Absolutely. And you mentioned as well about if it's actually like an information graphic. So, for example, at the bottom of my sort of blog show notes style blog for the podcast, I've just started putting in author bio, which is a graphic. Should I take that complete description into the alt text then if it's like an information graphic?

SPEAKER_01:

Don't make it too complicated. Just a quick little description of what the thing is and then the information that that's in there.

SPEAKER_03:

So if it's an image of a person, we want to describe it so that we're given that full user experience as they would do if they were seeing the image. They want to know age, race, a description of how the person looks and what they're doing. And then if it's a graph or an information or whatever, you're just literally making sure they can get that same information as they could if they were looking at it.

SPEAKER_01:

A big thing that's often used, actually, just so that people get kind of common examples, is we'll often use images of testimonials, like screenshots of messages that we get through just putting in testimonial from Claire and then what Claire has said to us. Yeah, put in a description of that. That's something that's so common. You don't want people to go on and not be able to listen to that amazing feedback that a business has had. You don't want them to be hearing image, image, image, image, image and getting frustrated. That's the section where they should be going, oh cool, this business is like really great and it has brilliant results. So yeah, that's a really common one. Um if you've got any screenshots of testimonials.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and it's just about trying to put yourself in their shoes, isn't it? If this was being read out to me, what would I want to know? Like what's important to know? Yeah. And so something we've not mentioned, I'm curious about, is fonts. Now, I, as I say, have full vision aside from reading glasses and some fonts, especially on like Instagram or whatever, I just can't read them. Or I can't be bothered trying to read them because they're too swirly.

SPEAKER_01:

Is it script fonts?

SPEAKER_03:

Is this an issue?

SPEAKER_01:

Script fonts are actually one of the ones that I had used that my sister was like, that is so hard to read it. I was like, oh, okay. I get it. They're girly and they're pretty and they can feel quite boho or sophisticated and things, but yeah, they're really hard for people to read.

SPEAKER_03:

And if I'm doing um an Instagram audit and I see it in the bio, it's the first thing I'll say to change. I find it irritating. There's no need for it. You shouldn't have to work hard to try and read what someone's does.

SPEAKER_01:

If someone's dyslexic or something, it can because script fonts they really change the shape of the letters. So someone who's dyslexic, and that's so common. We all know multiple people who are dyslexic. Like their brains so often just can't associate now that kind of squiggly letter with the letter that it actually is because the shapes don't match. So yeah, script fonts, I'm sorry, are yeah, in the bin. We want letters that are straight up and down. We want sans fonts or sans serif. Those are the two the two that you want.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And what about layout of text on our website as well? Should it be left aligned, straight, left aligned, so we could just lead read the left to right?

SPEAKER_01:

Left aligned because so centered text obviously is very common as well. Personally, if somebody really says to me, Oh, I really want this text to be centered, I will only do that right at your hero section, right at the top of a website, because you've generally only got maybe like two lines of text. The reason why this is important is because left-aligned text, the user, the reader, knows exactly where the next sentence is essentially starting. When you've got a long section of center aligned text, every new line is starting in a different position. That can make it hard for people to essentially like follow and find the next line. And then that gets frustrated, and if they've got any distractions that are happening in their day, then they're out.

SPEAKER_03:

That's just like anything. I always say the number one rule of business is make it easy for your customer to buy. And I guess that's what this ties into as well. Make it easy for them to find out about you, and and which ultimately we want that to lead to a purchase. That's you know, that's the that's the dream here. That's the goal. Don't make it difficult for anybody.

SPEAKER_01:

I completely check myself in this like as a business owner. We get so attached to our websites and to our branding, and we want it to be a reflection of us. And I mean, I'm going through our e-brand just out, and there have been multiple times where I've said to myself, like, this isn't about you. This literally isn't about you.

SPEAKER_03:

You need to like your ideal client all the time.

SPEAKER_01:

It's literally got nothing to do with you, it's about your customers. You want it to be as easy for them as possible, and we do need to take ourselves out of it. And sometimes that involves a little you have to pause and maybe give yourself a little reality check and go, like, is this important or am I is my almost like my ego or like creativity kind of like getting in the way of things? Because and remember that we're not the important person almost in this.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And that comes with all aspects of our branding, doesn't it? And marketing, the colours and whatnot, where I've made the mistakes way back at the start. I spoke about that in my last podcast episodes. I just chose colours I liked and fonts I liked. There was no that was a the limit of the thought process. It's not about you. It's not, it's about who you think is most likely to buy from you, your ideal client, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01:

We want to light our brand in. Like that is, I do think that's important because we want to show up with confidence. You want to be proud of it, you want to be excited to put things together. You don't want to be creating content and creating other marketing materials and being like, oh my god, I just hate this. This looks awful. Like, absolutely that's not what we want. You do want to like your colours, and you do want it to be a semi-reflection of you so that somebody comes across your brand completely online and then they meet you in real life. You kind of want it to make sense. You know, you don't want to meet someone be like, oh wow, say if you've got really bright pastel or colourful brand, and then you meet somebody and they're really like really kind of dull and a bit bland, and then you're like, hold on, wait a minute, where's the bubblegum pink pastel blue lady that I've been following on Instagram for three years?

SPEAKER_03:

You do there, there has to be a link with you. That makes a lot of sense. And again, it's a mistake I made way back in the day with my floristry business. I went from out of the frying pan into the fire. So I had the colourful logo, but it was sort of muted pastel colours, which isn't really me or my ideal client at that point either. And then moved from one extreme to the other to white and navy blue with touches of gold, which gives elegant, corporate, trustworthy. And then I rock up in my hoodie, my flewery shoes. Oh man. And it wasn't aligned at all.

SPEAKER_01:

So at that point, but at least you were kind of going elegant, and probably at that point you're maybe looking at charging higher prices, so you do want it to be more sophisticated. So there definitely was like a thought process, but you probably just needed somebody there to maybe bounce ideas off of and have a play around and very much so spend a little bit more time on it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yes. Lessons have been learned, and now I love my branding. My branding is very colourful, it's there for my ideal client, but also for me, aligns with my values and everything I'm on a mission to do and whatnot. And I feel confident showing it, it doesn't feel like it's not me at all. It doesn't feel embarrassing, it feels like an extension of me. However, it also meets my ideal client. So yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_01:

So important, kind of looking at your ideal client scene, what colours it do you like? What colours do you resonate with? Colour psychology, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03:

Quick pause from our conversation because I'm wondering how you'd feel if I told you I could give you a free£50 today. Yep, if you've been thinking about moving your business bank account, or perhaps you don't have a business bank account yet, I can highly recommend Monzo. And if you open an account with them via the link in today's show notes, you get a free£50. Monzo are free to bank with. I bank with them personally. It's so easy to use, and also they won Best Business Banking Provider in the UK in 2024. So if you don't have a business bank account yet or you're looking to change from where you are just now to free business banking and£50 in your account, head over to small businessgrowth addicts.com for the link and enjoy. I feel that we've spoken about loads about websites, which is amazing. Like I've got so much to get stuck into, but I think the first thing I'll just do as ask Rachel to just do an audit for me. No worries. But social media, we're all using social media, and I touched on there, and you know, there's one Instagram account I follow, and I love the account, but the bio just makes me want to just scream when I see it because it's all squirrely, swirly. I don't even know what it says. So, how does this go beyond our websites into like our full social media marketing and branding and everything? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

The most important thing really is to make sure those brand like foundations, your colour palette, your and your font, don't have any accessibility issues within them, the contrast levels and how readable the text is. If you've got like a yellow and white colour palette and a script font, there's a lot of people that aren't going to be able to read any of the content that you're putting out there. Maybe they could read it if they really sat there and tried, but they're not going to do that. That's not then just on your website. That's on every carousel post, every Facebook post, any flyers you create, any KDF downloads that you've put together. It goes all the way across your brand.

SPEAKER_03:

I've got to have every brand colour in this document, including yellow in the writing.

SPEAKER_01:

Anyone who's sitting there with their yellow and white colour palette, that was my first website that I'd put together. It was like a mustard of yellow and white and a script font.

SPEAKER_03:

I've been there. I was like, I love yellow. Anyone listening, we've made these mistakes, and I currently am making them also on my own website. So you're not alone. I can't repeat enough. There's no shame, no judgment here.

SPEAKER_01:

You didn't know any of this until you decided to listen to this episode. So don't worry about it. But yeah, basically, when it comes to any all of our social medias and everything like that, if the brand foundations aren't accessible, then your brand isn't accessible. And it's not inclusive. And that's I'll use it, I use the word inclusive like so much because I know for like so many people in my network, more people that I'm getting to know, inclusion is just such an important thing to them. Whether that's been inclusive for people who are neurodivergent, people within like the LGBT, like trans community, all of that. Like we really want to be like inclusive safe spaces. Accessibility just has to be a bit of that because you can't be inclusive whilst not being accessible for for people to to literally read your content. Getting those brand foundations right is essential because otherwise, all of the thoughtful and beautiful and thought-provoking content that we're putting out there, you're missing people.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And if you think you've got not a lot of time on a website to catch someone's attention, reduce that dramatically on social media. Like you've got three seconds and or you're out.

SPEAKER_01:

It's brutal. You helped me with a reel recently because I wasn't able to use trending audios. But I now get I didn't realise that edits give you like a little insights tab. Yeah. And that can be really depressing. But if you're like seeing how quickly people move on and oh, I spent so much time on it.

SPEAKER_03:

I know, I know. It's a savage place, it really is. So honestly, if you think people are getting not going to spend long trawling your website, you've got about three seconds on social media, and that's why Rachel's, of course, part of my mentor group where we do our utmost to make social media easy and fun and profitable and get content out there that's purposeful and quick to create, so that yeah, we're not spending hours on things for something that's going to potentially live and die within 24 hours. Literally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And like the algorithm and everything, and people's just the way people use social media, we all sit there and dim scroll. But I always just think like accessibility is one of those things where our patience is so short anyway. But if somebody's literally can't read it, they're gone.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't blame them. One bit, yeah, absolutely. So let's just make everything clear with everyone in mind, everybody, everybody. Yeah, absolutely. Now we have covered a ton of information there. Like I've absolutely absorbed every bit of that. I've got an A4 bit of paper here that's covered both sides. I've just like the forever student, I'm like this all the time. Honestly, I just that's my way of learning. I just write everything down and it seems to soak in. The pen-brain connection is very strong for me. But if anyone's listening and thinking, right, okay, where do I start? Because I know that I have some of these issues on my website. Where do I start right now?

SPEAKER_01:

Free options are accessibility scanners and they will give you a list. If you want a free option, I can actually give you a list of them and then they could probably go in the show notes. Like I said before, I do accessibility audits. You can book one of those. So we can either jump on a call together or I can do a pre-recorded video for you. Or if you're somebody who really likes information kind of written down, then I can do a PDF report for you. I'll force myself to do it because I've I'm so much more of a talker.

SPEAKER_03:

Like I just I love to chat. The idea of a pre-recorded loom video sounds awesome, then that'll just be you like clicking through and showing us what's going on.

SPEAKER_01:

Nobody has to sort of block time out of their calendar to go on a call. If you would rather just get the loom recording and you can watch that after the kids have gone to bed or like whenever, that's a really nice and easy option for people.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm going to presume that your website will be a good example of accessibility. So where can we find that, Rachel? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it will be the inclusive design company by the time this is out. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03:

Because of course you're going to rebrand just now. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh so I've been a Soul Trader freelancer for the last four years, and it's just been my name, RachelMess.com. And RachelMess.com doesn't really mean anything. If you're looking for a web designer and you're looking for a company, and my ideal clients are the people who are looking for somebody who specializes in accessibility or who really cares about inclusion. So yeah, the inclusive design company just seems like such a it is what it says on the fin type thing that's now registered and there will be probably not a completely finesse, finished website by the time this comes out, but eventually it will get to probably more fun. And I really need to, I've been saying I'm gonna be I was gonna be doing this for months and I've not launched it yet. So kind of giving myself like a little kick this week to be like, get something there, but it will be accessible. So go there, have a look. It is the inclusive design company.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I'll pop the link in the show notes. And what about social media? What's your fave social media hub that we can come and find you on? Get some chat.

SPEAKER_01:

I have been very active on Instagram and I've been enjoying Instagram, and I am on LinkedIn as well. Yeah, so those are basically the two main places. Facebook it will automatically get posted, but I tend to forget to go in and actually spend any time in there.

SPEAKER_03:

It's easy done when you're cross-posted, isn't it? Because you think you've ticked that box. Yeah, yep. Well, we'll we'll link to your Instagram and LinkedIn then, so we can just come and connect with you there. That'd be great. That was just an incredible learning experience, Rachel. Thank you so much. Do you think there's anything we didn't include that we should have included there?

SPEAKER_01:

Those are the really the kind of main points. And again, if anyone's looking for sort of extra help, then get in touch and and I can absolutely like sort of explain more. I've already got like a couple of like free downloads, and I'm working on a few more of the next couple of weeks. So there will be more sort of like resources available as well with kind of hopefully like helpful guides to maybe help you with like your colour contrast like decisions around colour palettes or anything like that.

SPEAKER_03:

Awesome. Okay, well, I am gonna book for the website audit, and you can fit me in whenever you've you've got space for me, and then maybe I could share the details of that as well. So if anyone's thinking about that, just what's actually included in it, and I can show that off and how that helped me move through my website and make some make some changes. Because I say, Yeah, this feels personal when you have someone in your family, like you mentioned, your sister, my son has a visual impairment and physical disabilities, so he might actually navigate a computer, he's only five, so we've not quite crossed that bridge yet, but he might very well navigate it differently. And I'm thinking of my father-in-law as well, you know. I just want to make sure if anybody wants to find me and reads what's I'm putting out there that they can.

SPEAKER_01:

That's really the bottom line. I think once you start kind of learning about these things, it's hard to pretend that you don't know it anymore. So then you're just like, well, I know this now, so I I need to do something about it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Thank you so much, Rachel. Take care and I will speak to you soon. Thank you so much for joining us today for another episode of Small Business Growth Addicts. I hope today's episode has given you inspiration and tangible tips that you can use to grow your small business in a way that feels right for you. If you love today's episode, please head over to smallbusinessgrowthadicts.com and check out today's show notes where you can find details of our wonderful guests, sponsors, discounts, freebies, and so much more. Please also don't forget to leave a review today. Reviews are invaluable to us to help us get the show out there. Every single one is read and very much appreciated. Until next time.