Brand Accessibility
1. What is brand accessibility?
Accessibility is the act of making your brand available and enjoyable to all people who have disabilities. This can include potential customers who are visually impaired, hearing impaired, or with physical or psychological disabilities. For example, in the UK there are approximately 3 million colourblind people (about 4.5% of the entire population), most of whom are male.
Digital accessibility refers to how usable online spaces, such as websites, apps, intranets, and social media, are for all possible users, regardless of their ability or disability. It’s about optimising online user experiences for people with disabilities, considering their customer experiences and validating their needs.
Accessible digital spaces are ones that people with permanent or temporary disabilities can use without encountering barriers. It means for example designing a website so that disabled people can access the same information — and have the same user experience — that a non-disabled person would.
Some examples of common barriers
- Websites that aren’t compatible with screen-readers.
- Content that can’t be navigated using a keyboard.
- Missing alt-text for images.
- Multimedia without alternatives, such as audio descriptions, transcriptions, and captions.
- Low contrast makes text hard to perceive.
Brands that take inclusive experiences seriously
The variation in neurological and physical abilities within communities is vast, and becoming widely recognised. New design approaches that deliver a better, more accessible experience for all are driving innovations, such as:
- Microsoft:
Designed for the blind and low vision community, Seeing AI is a Microsoft research project that harnesses the power of AI to describe people, text, currency, colour, and objects.
- Google:
Google made finding wheelchair accessible locations as easy as typing in an address. Users can now turn on ‘Accessible Places’ feature which indicates wheelchair friendly places.
- Apple:
They launched a dedicated Apple Care support team for people with disabilities and re-designed its accessibility site to make users aware of new capabilities.
- Amazon:
Their new feature called Show and Tell helps blind and partially sighted people identify common household grocery items.
Amazon and speech start-up Voiceitt announced a collaboration to make Alexa more accessible to people with atypical speech. Voiceitt is an app that uses machine-learning and speech recognition technologies to help people with speech impairments communicate and be more easily understood.
- Asda:
Asda’s new “quieter hour” and lanyards open access to all. In an effort to improve access for all, Asda has trained over 85,000 of its supermarket staff to better work alongside disabled colleagues and serve disabled customers. They’ve adopted the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Scheme to help staff and customers support people with hidden disabilities wearing lanyards decorated with sunflowers. To bolster their efforts they’ve introduced a ‘Quieter Hour’ in stores to aid customers with disabilities linked to noise sensitivity. Monday to Thursday, between 2pm and 3pm, the supermarket will operate with reduced noise levels.
Find out more here
- NHS:
The NHS underwent a massive digital overhaul to its platforms in 2016. The existing NHS Digital websites covered more than 400 services. They were difficult to use and lacked cohesion. Information was difficult to find because of:
- poor navigation
- an excess of text, links and technical written content
The new website was run by The Government Digital Service. It reduced the amount of time users spent on a web page before they found the information they needed.
The NHS built a website which was easier to use with:
- clearer written content
- simpler interface
- the number of pdfs reduced from 12,000 to a few hundred
- removal of banner ads
Pages with AAA accessibility ratings (the highest level) rose from 53% in April 2018 to 98% in October 2019.
The results:
- daily users went from 15,000 to 26,000
- reduced average time spent on page
2. Why creating an accessible brand experience?
It’s the right thing to do
When we secure the rights of people with disabilities and move away from ableist conformity, we invest in our own common future.
It improves SEO
Best practice techniques actually complement SEO strategy. Search engines like solid structure and markup in the form of organised headers, correct semantics, unique link text and properly deployed alt text.
It’s better business
Accessible design allows you to tap into everyone’s potential. By removing barriers and including more people in your conversation, you can reach more customers, increase customer satisfaction, and gain a competitive edge over those who don’t include such features.
It creates a positive brand profile
It means people of all abilities can connect with your brand, allowing you to reach a larger consumer base.
It’s a legal requirement
It’s not just a suggestion — it’s a legal requirement for public and private sector organisations. Different countries have different laws, but many — including the UK — base their legislation on the international holy grail for web accessibility, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
WCAG provide guidelines on how to make your website more accessible to people with disabilities. Measuring your website against WCAG compliance standards is a good indicator of whether your website would be deemed as accessible to disabled people.
3. How are developments in recent years?
It’s important that your brand is in touch with your user base, so make sure you keep up to date with recent developments and shifts in user behaviour, such as:
The drive for internet inclusivity
71% of people with disabilities click away from sites that don’t meet their needs.
Live captioning has never been so popular & the use of audio description
Communication Access Real-Time (CART) services ensure virtual content is accessible to all by delivering synchronised speech-to-text captions. Although this service is designed to enhance the virtual experience for individuals with hearing loss or deafness, anyone can benefit, and live captioning has become a huge social media trend — with captioned videos receiving 40% more views than those without.
This is an example how Apple created accessible products for people with disabilities. They use speech-to-text captions as well as audio descriptions. Audio description is a term used to describe the descriptive narration of key visual elements in a video or multimedia product. This process allows individuals who are blind to access content that is not otherwise accessible simply by listening to the audio.
We’re firmly in the digital world
We were inching this way pre-pandemic, but now we’re firmly rooted in the E-sphere, using digital platforms for commerce, community, control, and convenience. Our virtual environments need to cater to the needs of all people, so that nobody is alienated from the market. The surge of remote access innovations during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the necessity of online inclusivity.
Accessible lawsuits are on the rise
2021 showed an expected continued increase in litigation, with more than 4000 lawsuits filed in the USA alone.
Inclusive representation
Increasingly, consumer considerations are growing to expect inclusive and diverse representation in terms of colour, culture, size, shape, age, ability, gender and sexuality — and rightly so. A 2021 study conducted by Quantilope found that 76% of Gen Z think that brands need to consistently address diversity & inclusion.
4. The anatomy of an accessible brand
A balance needs to be struck between your brand identity, and usability for all, and there are a few things that you can do to improve readability and user experience. You can incorporate these into a style guide, which contains information on e.g. content hierarchy, text, fonts, image ALT text, navigation etc.
An example how to make LinkedIn posts more accessible:
- 1. Use camel case for Hashtags
#WriteHashtagsLikeThis #notlikethis Camel case allows screen readers to distinguish different words within a hashtag, as well as making them easier for everyone to read. - 2. Give your images alternative text
Think about what you want your image to say to people and use that as the alt text feature in LinkedIn when you add your image. - 3. Use emojis sparingly
When read by screen readers, their interpretation might be very different from what you intended. - 4. Use clear language and avoid jargon
This doesn’t mean that you should avoid all technical terms — that would be impossible. Just make sure that your language is direct and simple, no need to reach for that thesaurus. - 5. Don’t rely on images for your message
Images are a great way to anchor interest, but your meaning needs to be conveyed through text as well, ensuring that no one misses out on key information.
5. Creating an accessibility culture, the 5 key elements
Accessibility culture is a growing and necessary component of a corporate infrastructure. But what should it look like?
1. It has standards
Companies with accessibility culture have chosen a standard to follow that provides guidelines for accessibility compliance. It could be Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), or the US Section 508 guidelines, regional standards such as the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), or maybe it’s the EU Directive. Whatever the chosen standard, it is made available publicly for all employees to reference.
2. It’s educated
Companies that display accessibility culture have educated, trained employees. The staff is aware of the adopted accessibility guidelines, they know how accessibility affects their jobs and their content creation. They receive regular training, and new employees are trained. Topic-specific training is obtained for various departments. For example, web designers are trained in web accessibility, marketing staff is trained in accessibility for social media, IT staff is trained on how to evaluate software tools for accessibility and usability.
3. It’s accountable
Employees of companies with accessibility culture are accountable for their content creation and the accessibility of any materials that are produced by them or their staff. They know who to ask for assistance, and they know that they are responsible for compliance. They know feedback and complaints must be addressed willingly and immediately. They are not afraid to communicate to coworkers and management when something is inaccessible and needs to be addressed.
4. It’s inclusive
Companies with accessibility culture work alongside people with disabilities (PWD) to ensure that they go beyond compliance and include PWD in planning and content creation. They actively seek input from PWD and incorporate their feedback into the planning and creation of content, software, and services. Staff members with disabilities are used as valuable resources to help educate fellow employees and management.
5. It’s everyone’s job
Companies that have accessibility culture make accessibility part of every person’s daily responsibility. Just like all staff must adhere to health and safety policies and non-discrimination policies, all staff is expected to adhere to the accessibility policy. All staff is trained and accountable. No person is afraid to speak up when they find a compliance failure, and all are encouraged to suggest more accessible and inclusive ways to achieve success in any aspect of the business.
Companies with accessibility culture are more inclusive and have a lower chance of facing accessibility lawsuits. Their material reaches more of their target audience, and they miss fewer opportunities.
6. Brand accessibility at Accurx
We have been taking a few steps to make our brand more accessible and we’ve been exploring ways how we can start implementing more accessibility. This is only the beginning and it is something that will be a continuous journey of learnings and improvements. This piece of research is the start of opening up the conversation and the understanding for the need of it.
For example on our social media posts we use captions and we limit the amount of text and don’t use complicated visuals.
After a workshop to look at the accessibility of our website, we removed carousel images as they have low visibility. We also looked at the contrast of some of our brand colours, and changed the pine green into a slightly darker version. We changed the body copy to a bigger font-size. Alt-text was introduced for all images. We are also looking into simplifying the navigation menu and make it more clear and straightforward.
There are a few actions we can consider implementing:
- Optimise our website for keyboard navigation and make sure our website is compatible with screen-readers
- Be more accessible at our events, what can we do to improve?
More interesting reads:
GOV.uk has an interesting guidance about “Accessible communication formats” that sits within their inclusive communication department.
Resources:
https://www.tailorbrands.com/blog/how-to-make-branding-accessible
https://studionoel.co.uk/brand-accessibility
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inclusive-communication/accessible-communication-formats
https://www.linkedin.com/company/nilehq/
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/wall-of-fame/seeing-ai/
https://equidox.co/blog/five-key-elements-of-accessibility-culture/
