Yesterday I was pleased to attend a webinar with Nicole Clarke and Rick Mare from Shazamme on the subject of website accessibility, which means making sure that all visitors to your site can use and engage with it regardless of disabilities, impairments or other limitations. It is an emerging area of legal importance for all website operators, as web visitors with disabilities are beginning to sue for better access. Some of the key points I took away from yesterday’s session include the following:

Voice technology has completely transformed search. With the proliferation of Siri, Alexa and other voice-activated tools, more and more users are “voice-first” searchers, regardless of disability. In addition to being a key component for accessibility, voice also helps your SEO as Google and other search engines continue to increase the focus on this behavior. All of the voice search tools use their own map tools, though, so you’ll need to submit your site to multiple map/search engines so that voice search is enabled across multiple devices and platforms. That was a big ah-ha moment for me! Read the rest of this entry »