Is Your Bank's Website Accessible To All?

Everyone experiences the world through their own unique lens, and the digital realm is no exception. While some of us can navigate websites seamlessly, people with disabilities face challenges that often go unseen by those who don’t encounter them on the daily. 

Community banks carry more than just the legal responsibility of making their websites accessible to people with disabilities. “It’s just good practice,” says Matt Larrabee, director of web services at Manchester, N.H.-based Pannos Marketing, which serves financial institutions. “You never want to limit anybody from using your website. You’ll lose customers if you do.

“The crux of web accessibility is making your website available to anybody who comes to it, no matter what disability they might have,” he adds. “It is providing alternatives to people in different situations so they can use your website to the full capacity.”

Accessible websites also tend to be clearer and easier to read for everyone, according to Reynold Kissling, a UX designer at content marketing agency MSPC in St. Paul, Minn. “I believe that accessible design is good design for everybody,” he says. “It’s not just for people who need it.”

Accessibility tips

Community banks are generally required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure that their websites are accessible to people with disabilities. Although there isn’t a federal regulation that sets out detailed website accessibility standards—and banks have some bandwidth when building or overhauling their websites—the Department of Justice and some courts have referenced the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a model.

“A bank can determine the best way to ensure that their website is accessible, but WCAG is often cited,” says Rhonda Thomas-Whitley, senior vice president and senior regulatory counsel for ICBA. 

For example, you could ensure that all videos and audio clips include closed captions, subtitles or transcripts to allow those with hearing impairments to access the information.

Similarly, all non-text content—namely pictures and graphics—should be accompanied by alternative text describing the content to accommodate visually impaired people’s use of screen readers. 

“Someone with low or no vision [who requires] the use of a screen reader should be able to tab through the website without too much difficulty and be able to actually access the content,” Kissling says. 

Making sure your website has adequate color contrast is another important aspect of accessibility, allowing those with low vision and colorblindness to take in information. When presenting text visually and in images, you should aim for a color contrast ratio of 4.5:1. You can measure this using an online contrast checker like WebAIM. 

Keep a finger on the pulse

For more technical insight, ADA guidelines and WCAG can be helpful references to improve your bank’s website accessibility. 

“Review these guidelines and conduct a review of your website,” Thomas-Whitley says. “You want to be able to demonstrate that the website is accessible, and at the end of the day, all community banks want to make sure consumers are able to look at that bank’s website and get whatever information they need.”

“Anything that you can do on a website, if you have full ability to do that as a normal user, you need a version of that for each type of disability,” Larrabee adds. 

Thomas-Whitley notes that community banks should keep accessibility in mind when partnering with third parties. When engaging vendors or renewing vendor relationships for services pertaining to your website and other digital platforms, make sure they adhere to your accessibility standards.

Accessibility doesn’t stand still

Just as the internet is an ever-changing landscape, website accessibility guidance is also evolving. “Any time you’re doing a redesign or relooking at old pages, just check again to make sure that everything is compliant, because standards do change over time,” Kissling says.

There are helpful tools available online for reviewing website accessibility, but sometimes the best sources are users themselves. Larrabee recommends asking somebody who has a disability—visual, hearing-related or otherwise—to test your website and then provide feedback. 

“The [online] tools are great, and they will give you a head start on it,” he says, “but we find that a lot of people who actually use the site with disabilities will give you different feedback.”

Kissling advises keeping accessibility top of mind at your bank, which means having someone on staff who understands it and can advocate for it. 

“Leadership needs to know about it,” he says. “They need to be aware of why it’s important and be advocates for those experts so real changes can be made.”