October 02, 2024
Kevin Montgomery
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Accessibility is a critical part of website development especially when you serve the public. SearchStax gives universities, non-profits, government agencies, and other organizations the tools they need to build effective search.
SearchStax Site Search continues to provide innovative site search solutions for our user’s challenging needs – whether it’s higher ed site search for leading universities, effective healthcare search for providers and their patients or many of the other creative ways we help build and deliver engaging search experiences.
We make it easier to build accessible search experiences with our WCAG 2.1 AA compliant Search UI App and Search UI Kit for JavaScript. Our prebuilt search app and JavaScript framework are set up “out of the box” to follow WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines for accessibility. This means your site visitors, regardless of how they use their device, can access, experience and engage with your site search features and functions.
Site Search users can use the stand-alone Search UI App or build their own search front ends using our Search UI Kit JavaScript framework.
SearchStax Site Search users can access the updated Search UI App in their account in the “Search UI Kit” option under the “Search” menu.
You can open the prebuilt Search UI App and then copy-and-paste the source code into your website or CMS. You’ll need to ensure that any styling updates and changes to functionality remain WCAG compliant. Your website will also need to follow WCAG guidelines to ensure that your search experience is correctly embedded in a WCAG-compliant page or website.
Our Search UI Kit for JavaScript-powered front ends includes WCAG-compliant templates for building customized search experiences. The Search UI Kit can streamline development with direct integration into your framework of choice as well as your development tools, build pipeline and release process.
npm i @searchstax-inc/searchstudio-ux-js
You’ll need to ensure any JavaScript apps or front ends you’re building with the Search UI Kit remain WCAG accessible and compliant. Using WCAG compliant templates alone may not be enough to meet the different criteria, and you’ll need to ensure that the rest of your front end follows WCAG best practices.
Much like the Site Search Crawler, our CMS-specific connectors are only used for indexing your site data and don’t affect your website’s front end.
If you are using Drupal or Sitecore you’ll need to ensure that your search front end and other integrations follow WCAG best practices. You may be able to use the prebuilt Search UI App by directly adding the search page source code directly to a page within your CMS. If you’re building a headless front end you’ll be able to utilize the Search UI Kit for JavaScript to build your WCAG-compatible interface.
Following WCAG best practices will make it easier for all visitors to your site to more easily navigate and find the content they’re looking for. Some WCAG practices can even make it easier for search engines, crawlers and other automated processes to access your site and understand the content more-effectively.
Some organizations may need to adhere to stricter WCAG guidelines and best practices but all web teams should strive to make their sites, content and experiences more accessible. Check your applicable laws and regulations to learn more about WCAG conformance.
If you’re just starting to build more-accessible websites for your users, reach out to the SearchStax team to learn more about Site Search. In addition to WCAG search front ends we’ve built a powerful user-friendly search platform that makes it even easier for marketers, developers and designers to deliver and optimize their site search.
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