Guesty takes accessibility seriously and we are actively investing in making the sites developed with Guesty Website's Platform more accessibility friendly. While we enable you to build accessible sites and are continuously adding features to make it even easier, it is ultimately up to you to ensure your site is accessible, similar to SEO or site performance. Learn more about accessibility at the Guesty Websites below.
What is accessibility?
Accessibility in terms of a website is a site that can be used by users with auditory, visual or cognitive disabilities, as well as those who must navigate by voice, screen readers or other assistive technologies. According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization that provides international web standards, an accessible website must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for these users.
Built-In Features for Accessible Sites
Here are some of the built-in features that you can use to create more accessible sites with Guesty Websites.
Correct Semantics by Default
Where possible, Guesty Websites leverages semantic HTML5 elements. This is the best practice for accessibility, as the standards of HTML implement a lot of good UX out of the box for assistive tools. The foundation of Guesty’s accessibility strategy is to rely on the standard HTML functionality. For example, headers use header tags (<h1>). This ensures the best accessibility functionality, as it’s already baked into browsers and supported by screen readers.
Heading Tags
By using heading tags, you help visitors who use screen readers understand your website and how it's organized. Heading tags (h1, h2, h3, and so on) break the content on a page up into related chunks of information. Keep the following in mind:
- Heading tags should be used to introduce content
- Use only one h1 tag per page or view
- Heading tags should be written in a logical sequence
- Do not skip heading levels
Alt Text
Ensure all image elements have an alt tag or attribute. Adding alt text to your images helps visually impaired visitors better understand the context of the photos on your site. When an alt tag is not present on an image, a screen reader may announce the image’s file name or path instead. This fails to communicate the image’s content. For images that include text, ensure the alt description includes the image’s text.
To add alt text to a widget, right-click the , and click Edit Content. For example, to add alt text to an image widget, see Image Widget.
Note:
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There is an 80-character limit for alt text fields.
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Background images do not have a space to enter alt text because when the page source is scanned or crawled by a search engine the background design is not recorded as content.
Keyboard Navigation
Not everyone uses a mouse or track pad to navigate a website. Users without a mouse navigate via keyboard by clicking tab or using arrow keys to move to the next element. You can access functionality with a keyboard.
Pop Ups
Pop ups can be closed using the keyboard.
Widgets
Not every widget in the Guesty Website platform is 100% friendly to keyboard navigation. As an example, any 3rd party tool like a Facebook embed or Map relies on the 3rd party developer to ensure it’s usable via keyboard.
Site Language Definition
We set the language of the website automatically, based on what you’ve set in the site settings. This ensures screen readers can determine the language of the website and assist users in the right language. For more information, see Set a Default Site Language.
More Features Coming Soon
Guesty is actively investing in making the sites developed with Guesty Websites Platform more accessibility friendly.
Additional Resources
For more information on accessibility, consult the following resources:
