Most of us don’t think twice about using a map to find a nearby coffee shop or local store, it’s one of those habits that feels like second nature. But for some visitors, who depend on keyboard navigation or screen readers, a map can be extremely challenging to use effectively.
Making sure your site is inclusive is an important part of serving your local community or target audience effectively. We believe maps should be easy to use for everyone! We’ve overhauled our tools to make them accessible so that you can focus on creating maps you’ll love, while we take care of the technical bits.
What does accessible mean?
A term you’ll frequently hear when discussing accessibility is WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). These guidelines serve as a set of rules for making your website, or maps in our case, inclusive and interactive to all visitors.
A great map should be easy to navigate, even if a visitor is only using a keyboard or a screen reader. It’s all about removing the guesswork. If you’ve ever tried navigating a web page using only your tab key you’ll know how easy it is to get lost, this is why we’ve overhauled our keyboard navigation to better support this use case.
But accessibility isn’t just about how you navigate, it’s also about what you can see. It’s important to consider the contrast ratio of your navigation elements. If your navigation blends into the background, they become hard to distinguish for users with low vision.
Navigate without a mouse!
As a test, head over to one of your website and try navigating the entire page using only your keyboard. You’ll be tempted to reach for your mouse, but do your best to use only the tab key to navigate through the page.
If your map or site isn’t optimized for accessibility, you might get trapped in a navigation loop, or skip entire content blocks entirely. This happens because of something called Tab Indexing, which is a hidden order that tells the browser which element comes next when a user navigates with the tab key.
The good news is, with WP Go Maps, you don’t have to think about these indexes. Our tools handle this automatically, ensuring visitors can navigate your map and markers with ease.
Marker Listings, your secret weapon!
If you ask us, Marker Listings are the unsung heroes of map accessibility. While a dynamic map is great visually, a screen reader loves a good list! By enabling our marker listings, you’re providing a text-based alternative to the marker pins within the map. This allows assistive technology to read out your location titles, addresses, and descriptions clearly.
To add to this, we’ve also made it possible for visitors to easily open markers via the marker listing items by using the Enter/Space keys once selected. They can also use the Escape key to close panels within the map.
Enabling accessibility in WP Go Maps
If you were expecting a complicated setup menu, or a list of settings you need to enable, we have some good news! There isn’t one. We believe accessibility shouldn’t be optional, and that is why we’ve worked around the clock to ensure our map elements are accessible right out of the box, no special setup needed.
We do recommend enabling a marker listing of your choice, for the best results. With your maps dialled in for accessibility, it might be a great time to run some tests on the rest of your site, to ensure it is accessible.
Tested and Verified
We regularly put WP Go Maps through it’s paces using industry-standard tools to ensure we’re hitting the mark when it comes to accessibility. Here are some of our results:
- Microsoft Accessibility Insights (FastPass): Passed
- Axe DevTools: Passed
- Google Lighthouse: Passed
- Wave Tools: Passed
When it comes to accessibility, a machine test isn’t enough to really understand and confirm that a map is accessible. That is why we also test the entire interface manually, using only a keyboard to ensure it can be navigated with ease.
We are also deeply committed to improving this further in the future, with the help of our incredible community.