If Your Website Only Works With a Mouse — It’s Broken
Well, not broken in the “your site permanently crashed and your server went up in flames” kind of way. But functionally broken, yes. Failing to account for fully functional keyboard navigation site-wide is both a massively big miss for impactful business benefits and a regulatory flop at a level that amounts to a battered, busted, and broken website.
The Functional Problem
As we all know by now, there are two ways to navigate a website–with a mouse or a keyboard. For some people, the thought of keyboard navigation harkens back to the “old days” of the internet, when features, form, and function seem rudimentary by today’s standards. We like our mouses…mice…er, mouse options (wired, bluetooth, touchpad, ergonomic, different sizes, cute colors, etc.). In fact, it’s safe to say that when exploring a website, no one is thinking, “I’d really prefer to have this experience be mouse-free because I genuinely love the ease of using a keyboard to navigate instead.”
But that’s because keyboard navigation isn’t a preference, advancement, or an optional feature. It is a necessary functionality for users who are blind or low-vision (or who have certain motor disabilities). So, unfortunately, by designing and implementing a website that is fully navigable only with the use of a mouse, you’ve actually created a host of accessibility problems that prevent a diverse array of users from accessing your website. This is especially true for users who rely on assistive technologies.
In other words, you’ve designed accessibility barriers right into your user interface. If that sounds like a functionality problem, it’s because it is. Let’s take a look at why.
Top 5 Accessibility Barriers Caused by Mouse-Only Navigation
1. Unreachable Interactive Elements
No matter how creative and well-designed your user interface, if it can’t be fully used, all of that sleek programming is for nothing. When buttons, links, and form fields are inaccessible by keyboard, people who rely on them are unable to navigate the site or complete important tasks (like checking out!). For instance, a drop down menu that won’t drop down without the click from a mouse, is utterly pointless for anyone reliant on a keyboard.
2. Missing Focus Indicators
If your website is missing visible focus outlines, keyboard users have a hard time understanding which element they’re interacting with or where they are on the page, leading to confusion and frustration.
3. Keyboard Traps
Certain elements can trap keyboard users inside. Modal dialog boxes are a good example of this. These dialog boxes pop up and demand some kind of action on the users part- like entering an email address or answering a question, freezing or blurring access to the website’s content until the action is complete. Without a way out, users who are keyboard-reliant are effectively trapped, with no way to move forward.
4. Improper Use of Non-Native Elements
While this is a coding issue that will only really land for those who are well-versed in the language of web development, when developers use non-standard coding for features that have established and standardized coding protocols, it decimates the utility of keyboard navigation and brings everything to a stand still.
5. Lack of Skip Navigation Links
When a user is relying on keyboard navigation, they can’t just use a mouse to jump to the text they’re interested in. Instead, they rely on skip links to move more swiftly through a website’s content to get to what they need. When these links are absent, the user has to painstakingly make their way through the website one small step at a time. Frustration at this level of snail-paced, tedious navigation can lead to consumers deciding to leave your website altogether.
The Business Problem
Any business wanting to hold court as a brand worth knowing, or any organization wanting to demonstrate its relative clout, will rightfully put time, energy, and money into building a website that leaves an impression. Creating a strong brand impression is accomplished by providing compelling or useful information and a winning user experience. In other words, by giving people what they want and making it extremely easy for them to access it.
Statistics That Tell the Story
When your website is suffering from functional accessibility issues, it doesn’t matter how compelling or useful your content is because it will not be accessible to a large portion of users. Looking only at users who are blind or low-vision, this amounts to a whopping 12% of the consumer base. When you factor in users with motor impairments who rely on keyboard accessibility due to difficulty maneuvering a mouse, this number grows substantially. While we don’t have hard statistics on how many people cannot successfully use a mouse, we do know that up to 32% of the consumer base has motor impairments. If even half of these individuals rely on keyboard navigation, that’s an additional 16% of consumers who cannot use your website.
Not only is your brand and your consumer base taking an unnecessary hit, but you’re also missing out on lucrative tax breaks and easy SEO advantages by operating a website with digital accessibility failures. And to make matters worse, you're also exposing your business to preventable financial risks like ADA lawsuits and regulatory fines. Yikes!
The Solution to the Problem
This problem is easily overcome by being aware and prepared at the design phase or by correcting accessibility missteps after the fact. If the latter sounds daunting, it’s not. Professional digital accessibility auditing, like the services offered through AllyADA, make it extremely easy to identify and fix existing accessibility roadblocks.
In a short period of time, your website (and your business!) can go from accessibility blunders, litigation nightmares, SEO stagnation, and consumer distrust, to glowing, flowing, bank account-building navigational success. Talk to one of our CPACC-certified accessibility specialists today to learn how we make sure users reliant on keyboards and assistive technologies can experience the same streamlined navigation across your website as everyone else.