Americans breathe in carcinogenic chemicals found in cars: study

Researchers have found that a source of carcinogenic chemicals is in Americans’ cars – but there may be a way to reduce your risk.

Environmental Science and Technology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, published a study called “Flame Retardant Exposure in Vehicles Is Influenced by Use in Seat Foam and Temperature” on Tuesday.

The study explains that Americans breathe in chemicals from the flame retardants in their vehicles. The chemicals can cause issues ranging from developmental neurotoxicity to thyroid hormone dysregulation and even cancer.

The types of chemicals found in flame retardants range from polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which were common in cars until the early 2000s, to alternative brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and organophosphate ester flame retardants (OPEs). 

STUDY FINDS EVIDENCE OF MICROPLASTICS IN BRAINS AND OTHER ORGANS

The federal government requires a level of flame retardants in vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) mandated the use of flame retardants in the 1970s.

“Flame retardant (FR) chemicals are intentionally used in electronics, furnishings, and building materials to meet flammability standards,” the study explains.

STD RATES SKYROCKET AMONG AMERICANS 55 AND OLDER: CDC

“Most [flame retardants] are used in an additive manner (i.e., not chemically bound), and many are semivolatile, indicating that they can be present in both the gas phase and partially in the condensed phase (e.g., particles and surfaces), depending on environmental conditions.”

Americans who drive professionally or face long commutes may be at a higher risk of harm from the chemicals.

“These findings highlight that commuters are likely to be exposed to [flame retardants], especially those with longer commutes or those who drive vehicles full time as part of their employment,” the paper read. 

“In addition, children, who breathe a greater amount of air per kg body weight compared to adults, would also be at risk of greater exposures for equivalent commuting times.”

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Drivers and passengers in warmer states may face a greater risk of breathing in the flame retardant chemicals. But rolling down car windows, turning off the AC and parking in covered garages may help reduce exposure to the dangerous chemicals, researchers say. 

“Increasing ventilation by opening vehicle windows and avoiding recirculating interior cabin air may also reduce exposures,” the study said. “However, the greatest reduction in exposure from vehicle air would come from significantly reducing the amount of FRs added to personal vehicles.”

For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health.

Ohio man found with hammer at US Capitol, tased and arrested, police say

An Ohio man was tased and arrested Friday after allegedly trying to get into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington with a hammer, police said. 

The suspect, identified as Christopher Snow, 33, was being screened by U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) at around 3:40 p.m. at the Capitol Visitor Center, where his backpack went through an X-ray machine, authorities said. 

A USCP officer noticed a hammer inside the bag, police said. 

PHILADELPHIA POLICE CONTINUE PIECING BUS STOP SHOOTING THAT INJURED 8 STUDENTS

“When the officer attempted secondary screening to look inside the bag, the suspect attempted to grab the bag and became combative, a police statement said. 

Several officers intervened to stop Snow and a struggle ensued, police said. 

Officers then tased Snow and took him into custody. 

The hammer was found in the bag, police said. 

“These officers did what they were trained to do and stopped this man from getting into the U.S. Capitol,” said USCP Capt. Andrew Pecher. “Great work from the officer who spotted the hammer, to the officers who quickly took the suspect into custody.”

Investigators were still trying to determine why Snow, a Canton resident, brought a hammer to the Capitol. He is charged with assault on a police officer

Dive team claims to have found body of missing Orlando woman Sandra Lemire in pond near Disney World

A dive team in Florida claims to have found the body of a woman who went missing 11 years ago.

Sunshine State Sonar said their search team located the body of Sandra Lemire submerged in a van in a pond near Disney World. The group posted photos and videos of a red van being pulled from the pond in Orlando.

According to police, Lemire was last seen leaving her grandmother’s home in Orlando in 2012. Police said she was on her way to Kissimmee to meet a man she had met online through a dating service. Police said she frequently met and dated men through the internet.

She was last seen leaving a Kissimmee restaurant driving her grandmother’s 2004 red Ford Freestyle van. 

YOUTUBER HELPS MISSOURI POLICE FIND REMAINS OF MAN MISSING SINCE 2013

Orlando Police confirmed to Fox News Digital that a 2004 Ford van was found in a body of water on World Drive on Sunday.

CALIFORNIA DETECTIVES IDENTIFY REMAINS IN 1971 SOUTH LAKE TAHOE MISSING PERSON COLD CASE

Osceola Sheriff’s deputies and the Orange County Sheriffs Dive team assisted in the response.

Police are working to identify the remains found inside the van. When questioned by Fox News Digital, police would not comment on whether or not the body was Sandra Lemire.

Officials said the Florida Highway Patrol is handling the traffic crash investigation. 

A preliminary report by the FHP states that a Ford Freestar van was traveling on the State Road 417 southbound exit ramp to World Drive when, for unknown reasons, the van’s driver ran off the roadway and entered a retention pond. 

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As a result of the crash, officers stated that the van became completely submerged. The specific date and time of the crash remains under investigation.

The medical examiner’s office will provide an update once they have positively identified the deceased, police said. 

Human remains found in Lake Mead are from Las Vegas man who drowned in 1974, officials say

Skeletal remains found in a severely dry Lake Mead near Las Vegas last year have been identified as those of a man who vanished from the area in the 1970s, officials say.  Donald P. Smith of North Las Vegas was 39 at the time of his reported drowning in April 1974, according to a news … Continue reading Human remains found in Lake Mead are from Las Vegas man who drowned in 1974, officials say

Human bone found at Milwaukee beach

A person walking along a Milwaukee beach found a human bone Monday and additional remains were later discovered, authorities said. It wasn’t clear whether the additional remains also were human, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. SKELETAL REMAINS FOUND IN ARIZONA DESERT FUEL SPECULATION THEY MAY BELONG TO MISSING GEOLOGIST DANIEL … Continue reading Human bone found at Milwaukee beach

How Often Should You Blog? We Found A Blogging Frequency That Works

Do you find yourself often pondering blog-related questions, such as how many blogs per month for SEO? You’re not alone. There is no golden rule, but there are set practices to find the best fit for you, and we can illustrate how.

Blogging frequency is a common struggle for new bloggers and experienced bloggers alike. With so many factors to consider, including search engine optimization and brand awareness, it’s certainly an important thing to have planned out.

In this post, we’ll uncover the blogging frequency we found that works for one specific industry. We’ll show you how we drew this conclusion and how you can do the same for yours.

Why Is Blogging Frequency Important?

Blogging frequency is how often you publish blog posts on a weekly or monthly basis.

There are a number of benefits to finding your ideal blogging frequency.

First and foremost, blog posts allow you to rank for organic keywords. These are needed for driving organic traffic to your site.

A frequently updated blog also increases brand awareness. The more you post about your industry, the more aware of your web presence, your products, and your services your target audience becomes.

Blogging can help your business build trust in the community. Posting relevant content about your industry and regularly updating it will help convey trust and authority to your audience. They will be more likely to convert on your site versus a competitor that rarely updates their content or posts blogs.

For more practical reasons, a blog post frequency helps you to set a standard for yourself or your content writing team. Without a frequency in mind, you may constantly focus on writing blog posts at the expense of other activities. This extends to adjacent teams too, like social media and design, who would greatly benefit from a known frequency so they can prioritize their tasks.

So a blog post frequency gives you both an upper and lower limit, which means you can spend more time and money focusing on other aspects of your business.

Are You Blogging Too Often?

In addition to asking how often do you need to blog, it’s not uncommon to ask what happens when you blog too frequently? Or, is that even possible?

Perhaps you’re thinking the more, the better. As you’ll see in the analysis below, it’s not quite that simple.

You could post daily on your blog. Hourly, even. Will it be your best content, though? Remember that quality is better than quantity in almost all cases. By posting too frequently, you may be sacrificing the quality of your content which itself will have a negative impact on your brand.

What We Learned From Our Data about Blogging Frequency

For this analysis, we’re evaluating eight companies in the CBD industry. To find out how many blog posts they publish per month, we looked at their post sitemaps and calculated the average number of posts per month since January 2022.

We looked at a few metrics when measuring their success.

First, we looked at the overall keyword universe, meaning we analyzed the total number of keywords the blog ranks for on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). To drill down further, we also looked at the number of those keywords which ranked within the top 10 results, or on the first page. Finally, we compared the number of organic keywords each business ranked for in the top three results. These are the most coveted positions.

The greater your number of organic keywords, the farther your reach. While it’s not the only metric to consider when measuring success, it is a good indicator of such.

RoyalCBD.com: A High Post Frequency Example

RoyalCBD.com for ideal blog post frequency

With the highest post frequency on our list, RoyalCBD.com boasts an average of 18 blog posts per month. This seems to have paid off, with 24,351 organic keywords driving traffic to the website.

More important than organic traffic, however, is the quality of that traffic. RoyalCBD seems to boast high numbers there, too. The website has 5,603 keywords ranking in the top 10 and 2,920 keywords ranking in the top one through three positions on SERPs.

JoyOrganics.com

JoyOrganics.com for ideal blog post frequency.

The next on our list, JoyOrganics.com, also happens to be the site with the second-highest posting frequency that we analyzed. That is, 17 posts per month on average from January 2022 through June 2022.

This is likely a contributing factor for the rather high number of organic keywords – 17,103 to be exact – driving traffic to the site. Of those keywords, 1,679 rank in the top 10 and 511 rank within positions one through three on SERPs.

CBDfx.com: Is One Post Per Month Enough?

CBDfx.com for ideal blog post frequency.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is CBDfx.com, with a blogging frequency of about one post per month.

Before you think CBDfx.com is an anomaly, you should know they have refreshed 155 blog posts on their site in June 2022 alone. This means they optimized existing posts to meet current SEO standards. So while their posting frequency is low, the refreshed content is likely playing a large role in their organic keyword rankings.

CBDfx.com has 18,023 organic keywords with 2,576 ranking in the top 10 and 984 ranking within the top three positions on SERPs.

The takeaway here is that refreshed content can be just as important as new content for rankings.

HempFusion.com

HempFusion.com for ideal blog post frequency.

While we initially looked at post frequency from January 2022 through June 2022, there are some websites that have yet to post in 2022. This includes HempFusion.com. In those cases, we looked back at July 2021 through December 2021.

From July through December 2021, there was an average of seven blog posts per month. Despite not posting in 2022, this prior frequency seems to have provided some protection for HempFusion.com on SERPs. It currently has 2,827 organic keywords, with 391 ranking on the first page and 201 ranking in positions one through three.

MedterraCBD.com

MedterraCBD.com for ideal blog post frequency.

Here’s another site with no blog posts in 2022. From July through December 2021, though, MedterraCBD posted an average of five blog posts per month.

You might be thinking that surely MedterraCBD.com will have fewer organic keyword rankings than HempFusion.com. MedterraCBD.com actually has considerably more. To be specific, 7,435 organic keywords with 840 ranking in the top 10 and 486 ranking in the top three.

There are a few reasons for this. Foremost, MedterraCBD.com has ranked since the middle of 2017 while HempFusion.com only started ranking around January 2020. MedterraCBD.com has also seen higher average rankings overall, so it’s likely to see the effects of not posting less drastically.

JustCBDStore.com

JustCBDStore.com for ideal blog post frequency.

With 14 posts per month, surely JustCBDStore.com has a significant number of organic keywords.

Surprisingly, this site has only 8,680 organic keywords. Of those, 1,615 rank in the top 10, and 776 rank within the top three on SERPs. That’s close to the sites like HempFusion.com and MedterraCBD.com that didn’t post at all in 2022!

We know it’s not the posts per month responsible for that low of organic keywords. So the answer is likely in a factor we have not considered, such as the age of the website or social media presence.

Purekana.com: Moderate Number of Posts Per Month

Purekana.com for ideal blog post frequency.

Another on our list with a moderate number of posts per month, Purekana.com has a monthly blogging frequency of approximately 13.

Similar to JustCBDStore.com, Purekana.com has a small organic keyword profile with 7,126 organic keywords. Of these, 983 rank on the first page of SERPs, and 414 rank within the top three.

cbdMD.com

cbdMD.com for ideal blog post frequency.

Here’s another anomaly, though occurring in the opposite direction of what we saw above.

cbdMD.com posts an average of 13 blog posts per month. Despite this middle-of-the-road number of blog posts, it has the most organic keywords on our list with 37,784. This includes 5,924 keywords ranking in the top 10 and 2,154 keywords ranking within the top three.

But How Often Should I Blog?

To recap our findings, we analyzed eight CBD websites with the intention of pinpointing the optimal number of blog posts per month for the industry. Here is what we found:

A graphic showcasing blog posts per month, organic keywords, and backlinks for different websites.

cbdMD.com has the largest number of organic keywords. When you take into account its modest domain authority and medium-sized backlink profile, it becomes clear that the number of blog posts is the driving factor for its success.

Why is this not the case for JustCBDStore.com and Purekana.com, both of which also post approximately 13 blog posts per month? There are a lot of other variables at play, such as target keywords, length of the average blog post, and social media presence.

What does this mean for you?

Our research shows that for this industry, 13 blog posts per month is a good balance between quantity and quality. These should be focused on well-researched topics with at least one or two target keywords. This should further be accompanied by ample support from your cross-functional teams. This means social media promotion of the posts and digital assets from your design team at the very least. 13 a month was a number that allowed the sites we mention above to strike that balance.

In addition, blog post refreshes should also have a place in your content writing strategy. There’s no magic number of refreshes to implement here. It’s more so about updating older posts that may not fit in with the most recent SEO recommendations. This also gives you an opportunity to improve your internal linking.

Finding the Ideal Blog Post Frequency for You

The blogging frequency we found to be ideal for the CBD industry may or may not be ideal for your industry. So how can you find the ideal blog post frequency for your industry and, even more important, your blog?

The best way to do so is with an analysis of a sample of blogs within your industry like we performed above. You can easily do this with access to XML sitemaps and an SEO analysis tool like Ahrefs or, of course, Ubersuggest.

What does this look like?

  1. Find ten to 15 competitors with blogs in your industry to evaluate.
  2. Locate the sitemap for each of these websites.
  3. Take note of how often each site posts within a designated time period. We recommend looking at the last six months if possible.
  4. With the average number of posts per month for each site, you can now use an SEO analysis tool for a fuller understanding of that site’s SEO profile. Look specifically at the number of organic keywords and the number of keywords ranking within the top ten.
  5. With this information combined, you can determine which post frequency correlates to the highest number of organic keywords in your industry.

While organic keyword profile isn’t the only indicator of a solid posting frequency, it’s one that seems to correlate highly. So do take other factors into consideration if something stands out, but don’t overcomplicate it.

FAQs

Here are the answers to frequently asked questions on the subject of blogging frequency.

How many blogs should you post a week?

The answer is not so cut and dry as we’ve highlighted above. Once you have found your ideal blog post frequency for the month, it’s best to break it down into weekly goals.

How often do most bloggers post?

In our data, we saw post frequencies anywhere from once a month to almost 20. The answer is going to vary based on the client’s industry as well as the capacity of their content team, though it’s important not to compromise quality for cadence.

Does it hurt my content marketing to blog more or less than my competitors?

While competitor research can provide a good idea for the number of blog posts to write each month, it’s not the be-all-end-all. You should also consider how many quality posts you can write and whether you actually have something useful to say.

How can I find creative blog ideas?

There are plenty of ways to find creative blog ideas for your blog. You can research your competitors using Ubersuggest, find keyword ideas in Google Search Console, and or even use a blog idea generator.

What makes a quality blog post?

This could be an article topic all its own, as there is a lot that goes into quality blog writing. A few elements of a quality blog post include a compelling headline, a narrow focus, and a unique brand voice.

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Conclusion

When it comes to determining the ideal blogging frequency for your website, there is no magic number. There are many factors that play into that decision.

So how can you determine the best frequency for your blog?

The key is to look at other blogs in your industry and compare their posting frequency to their organic keyword profile. You’re looking for a strong organic keyword profile – the highest number of relevant page one keywords within the industry – for a clue as to how many posts per month are ideal for your blog.
Remember, though, that quality is just as important (if not more so) as quantity. So maintain a frequency that nears the ideal frequency for your industry but that still allows you to maintain a high content quality.

Kentucky woman's body found in creek, identified as missing flood victim

A body found on the bank of an eastern Kentucky creek has been identified as a missing flood victim, a coroner said.

Nancy Cundiff, 29, was one of two people still missing after historic flooding in July killed dozens and left hundreds without homes. Cundiff’s body was found Saturday near Troublesome Creek, which overflowed its banks during the floods, Breathitt County Coroner Hargis Epperson told the Lexington Herald-Leader. Cundiff lived with her mother, who also died in the flooding.

“The water overcame them in the house so quickly they just couldn’t react and it swept both of them away, house and all,” Epperson has said previously.

KENTUCKY FLOODING: 2 PEOPLE STILL MISSING AS RESCUE EFFORTS CONTINUE

Another Breathitt County woman, Nancy Baker, 60, remains missing.

KENTUCKY FLOOD LEAVES RESIDENTS SEARCHING FOR DRINKING WATER

A full recovery from the devastating floods is expected to take years in the hardest-hit areas.

Common UX Accessibility Mistakes Found on Websites

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, says the web is for everyone. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Poor design decisions can present barriers for many different groups of people. In fact, research by WebAIM finds that across one million homepages, there were over 50,000,000 “distinct accessibility errors” at an average of … Continue reading Common UX Accessibility Mistakes Found on Websites

Common UX Accessibility Mistakes Found on Websites

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, says the web is for everyone. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

Poor design decisions can present barriers for many different groups of people. In fact, research by WebAIM finds that across one million homepages, there were over 50,000,000 “distinct accessibility errors” at an average of just over 50 per page.

These errors don’t just make people feel marginalized; they stop hundreds of thousands of people from interacting with your brand or buying your product.

Few webmasters want to purposefully marginalize people or limit access to their site. That’s why it’s so important to understand the most common web accessibility issues and learn how to resolve them with clean design.

Let’s get started.

Why Is UX Accessibility Important?

Because the internet has become an essential part of the day-to-day lives of more than a billion people, site owners must take steps to make sure everyone can access it equally. It’s not just a matter of human rights, however. There is an obvious financial case for making your site accessible. Given that 61 million people in the United States have some form of disability, an inaccessible site could be harming your bottom line. Make your site accessible, and you potentially open the door to thousands of more customers.

Complying with UX accessibility design trends can bolster your company’s reputation. Making an effort to cater to a particular group of disadvantaged users proves your company cares about all of its customers. This added step may encourage potential customers to do more business with your brand going forward.

There’s also the small matter of legal compliance. While there’s debate about whether the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act includes websites as well as physical stores, that hasn’t stopped thousands of lawsuits getting filed with federal courts each year. You may not be punished for a lack of ADA website compliance, but the threat of legal action is clear.

Ultimately, designing with UX accessibility doesn’t just improve the browsing experience for users with disabilities; it improves the user experience for everyone. Even users with perfect vision benefit from a better color contrast and more labels — and your SEO certainly benefits from things like added alt text and better link descriptions.

The 7 Most Common Web Accessibility Mistakes

Making your website more accessible is as much about avoiding common issues as it is about integrating new technology. Avoid the following seven mistakes, and you’ll go a long way to making your site more accessible than your competitors.

1: Missing Alt Text on Images

Alt text is an HTML attribute that describes what an image represents. From an accessibility perspective, alt text provides information for screen readers to accurately describe images to visually-impaired users. If you don’t provide alt text or your alt text isn’t very descriptive, then you aren’t making your site’s images available to everyone.

There’s a difference between empty alt text and missing alt text. Sometimes images can be for purely decorative purposes. Where this is the case, an empty alt tag can be used, which appears as alt=””. This is ignored by screen readers and doesn’t impact usability.

Often, alt text isn’t empty but missing completely. When a screen reader comes across a missing alt attribute, it will assume that the image is important and inject the file name. For images like graphs and infographics that are fundamental to a user’s understanding of a webpage, the file name won’t be sufficient. That’s why it’s essential to create alt text for all of your images.

2: Weak Color Contrast

Have you ever tried to read a white font on a yellow background? Not easy, is it? But that could be how many users feel every time they visit your site. The truth is some people struggle to read text unless the color contrast between the font and the background is very stark. It’s why black font on a white background is such a popular choice.

The easiest way to improve color contrast is to avoid using similar colors for backgrounds and text. That means no orange font on a red background. Or green text on a blue background. Pay particular attention to design features like your website’s header or the submit button on forms, too. These features tend to incorporate brand colors and are more likely to cause contrast issues.

Alternatively, you can use a tool like the Contrast Checker from WebAIM to quantify your contrast ratio. The higher your ratio, the better the contrast and the more readable your website will be. The tool will tell you whether your colors pass or fail. As a rule, text and background colors should have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 for large text and at least 4:1 for normal-sized text.

As you can see from the images below, dark blue text on a white background has a great contrast ratio.

Example of a good contrast ratio of colors with dark blue on white.

But yellow text on a white background has a terrible contrast ratio.

An example of bad color contrast with yellow on white.

3: Poor Link Text

Links are a vital part of a web page, both from a user experience perspective and for SEO. But you need to accurately describe them using link text to make them effective.

While those versed in SEO might never dream of missing a chance to add a keyword in an internal link, missing link text is surprisingly common. Logos, buttons, and icons are all guilty of having no text, which means screen readers will ignore them. That’s not great if you want users to click your CTA button.

Vague or ambiguous link text is also an issue. Not only does a phrase like “click here” offer no SEO value, but it can also hamper users accessing your site via a screen reader. Including the entire http:// link without any anchor text whatsoever is even worse. Neither version contains the information these users need.

Instead, make sure the clickable text describes exactly what the user can find on the next page. In the example below, for instance, you know that by clicking the link, you’ll be directed to a page where you can get a 14-day free trial of Shopify.

The 14 day free trial for shopify.

Then there are navigation links. These can also create problems for screen readers if they are poorly coded. That’s because screen readers will not skip over them, meaning users will have to listen to your navigation menu every time they open a new page. Solve this by assigning ARIA roles to your navigation menus to indicate their purpose. This will help screen readers to avoid them where necessary.

4: Missing Form Labels

I’m almost certain your website has at least one form on it, even if it’s only on your contact page. But does every field have a label telling users what information they need to input? If not, your forms aren’t accessible to everyone.

A "how can I help" form.

Just like with link text, form input fields need a label so screen readers and other accessibility devices can understand them and help users navigate them. A label isn’t just the placeholder text you can see in the form field, though. You also need to add a description in the form’s code. That’s because placeholder text is usually ignored by screen readers. It also doesn’t help that placeholder text usually lacks a strong color contrast.

Ideally, you’ll have a visible label inside a <label> element so everyone (users, screen readers, bots) can understand what’s meant to go in each field.

5: No Markup For Data Tables

Tables are something of a nightmare for screen readers and other accessibility devices. When screen readers come across a table, they tell the user that there is a table with a given amount of columns and rows and then proceed to list out all of the data. Unfortunately, that data may not be read in the correct order. Worse still, screen readers can’t read out tables where there is more than one set of row or column headers.

In truth, the best way to make tables accessible is to not have them at all. Of course, that’s not going to work for some websites. So, where tables are required, you need to make them as simple as possible and use the correct markup. ID, HEADERS, and SCOPE attributes should be used to correctly label each part of your table. You can also use table captions to provide additional information to users about how to best understand your table.

Another alternative is presenting your data as an image file, with appropriate alt text listing out the data. However, for complex tables, that may not be feasible.

6: Lack of Keyboard Accessibility For Screen Readers

Not everyone is going to use a mouse to navigate your website. Many visually-impaired people will use a keyboard or another accessibility device to move around your website. And that means you need to pay special attention when designing and creating the layout of your site.

Specifically, users must be able to navigate your website using the space bar and tab key. Simple sites built in semantically correct HTML may make this possible without any adjustment, but more complicated websites will need to code in digital landmarks that better allow keyboard users and screen readers to move about.

Adding skip-to-content links at the top of each page can also save your users from having to tab through every menu item every time they open a new page. These buttons, which appear when you push the tab key, allow users to navigate the site using the tab and spacebar keys to skip the navigation and head straight to the main content of the page.

WebAIM's search function.

7: Non-HTML Content WIthout Proper Markup</h3>

It’s easy to forget about non-HTML elements when optimizing your site for accessibility. But content like PDFs and Word documents can also be an issue. Out of the box, users cannot customize these documents to make them easier to read nor do they work well with assistive technologies. Accessibility issues are even worse when documents are produced as image-only PDFs.

One solution is to solve navigation mistakes by tagging these resources for navigation by screen readers. Another is to use Office’s built-in Accessibility Checker to improve the accessibility of these documents when you create them.

Interactive content like sliders, accordions, and drag-and-drop widgets can also affect accessibility. So, too, can dynamic content like pop-up boxes and confirmation messages. If the screen reader can’t understand when these pieces of content are loading, it won’t be able to tell users about them.

Once again, you can use ARIA attributes to resolve this issue. Tagging these interactive and dynamic elements with the correct ARIA attribute will notify screen readers that the page’s content has changed. Alternatively, you can design your site in a way that avoids the need for pop-ups and other forms of dynamic content. Static websites may not look as flashy, but they are much more accessible.

FAQs

What are the four significant categories of accessibility?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are built upon the four principles of POUR: perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.

What is ADA compliance?

If your site is ADA-compliant, then it meets the recommendations set out in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and is accessible to someone with a disability. 

How do I make my website more accessible?

You can make your website more accessible by improving color contrast, adding alt text, or adding keyboard accessibility for screen readers.  

What is an example of website accessibility?

Allowing users to navigate your website using a keyboard instead of a mouse is an example of website accessibility. So is adding alt text to every image on your website.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, even the best designers and web entrepreneurs can create inaccessible websites. It’s why it’s so important to keep referring back to these mistakes whenever you build a website or create a new piece of content.

It’s more effort to include alt text on all images, add markup data to tables and improve the quality of your link text, but millions of users will thank you for it.

But don’t stop there. Next, learn how to create inclusive content and improve the overall user experience of your website.

What UX accessibility mistakes are you going to correct first?