Snack Chat: Digital Accessibility

Practice these strategies to create more inclusive projects and spaces.

Ginny Nemchick

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Ascender

4 min readJun 23, 2020

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Every month, Ascender hosts Snack Chat — a monthly, casual conversation for members around a specific topic over lunch. It’s a chance to connect, socialize, and get an introduction or refresher on an important subject. In June, we kicked off a series on Inclusive Practices by talking about Digital Accessibility.

Why this topic?

Inclusive practices is an all-encompassing category that includes many important and essential topics. We decided to focus on digital accessibility because there is an increased focus on doing everything electronically. From reaching your customers to meeting with your team to leveraging stakeholders — COVID-19 has made it so that digital communication is happening all day, every day.

That said, the concept of accessibility is important all the time, not just when there is a pandemic. Many disability advocates expressed frustration with having to wait so long for companies and institutions to make advancements in accessibility because they’ve been asking for many of these changes for years.

The best approach is to get proactive and think about these concepts at the outset of developing an online meeting, program, document, or any other form of content.

Let’s jump into some basic terminology, and then we’ll look at a few of the ways that entrepreneurs can build digital accessibility concepts into their projects.

Dialogue boxes appear from a computer screen.

What is Digital Accessibility?

Codecademy sums it up like this:

“Accessibility refers to designing devices, products, and environments such that individuals with disabilities or sensory impairments can successfully use the device or product.”

What is Universal Design?

Ireland’s Centre for Excellence in Universal Design has a great, detailed definition of Universal Design:

“The design and composition of an environment so that it may be accessed, understood and used:

1. To the greatest possible extent

2. In the most independent and natural manner possible

3. In the widest possible range of situations

4. Without the need for adaptation, modification, assistive devices or specialized solutions, by any persons of any age or size or having any particular physical, sensory, mental health or intellectual ability or disability, and:

in relation to electronic systems, any electronics-based process of creating products, services or systems so that they may be used by any person.”

The top view of an opened laptop computer with a gray keyboard and orange screen.

How do these things relate?

An easy way to understand Universal Design is that when you’re trying to make something more accessible for one group of people, it often ends up being easier for a large number of people. The classic example is the installation of a ramp on a building. Typically, we think of ramps as useful for wheelchair users only. However, ramps are also helpful for people who are pushing a stroller, carrying a package, or whose bodies do a little better with a slight gradient instead of steep steps. When a ramp is installed, the improved design benefits many different people.

We can apply this concept of universal design to digital accessibility. For example, when we utilize captions or transcripts on digital videos or meetings, we’re not just making it easier for folks who use screen-readers to browse our web content; we’re also making videos accessible to people who prefer to read vs. listen for a number of reasons, including language access and limiting sensory input.

The same goes for other digital accessibility techniques, including increased use of contrast in digital designs and utilizing alt-text to provide descriptions of embedded images. These practices make your content more accessible and can improve your business. Utilizing alt-text also helps improve SEO, increasing the chances that stakeholders find your content when searching for it.

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How Can I Learn More?

There is a wealth of information on this topic and we’ve truly only scratched the surface. If you haven’t considered how digital accessibility may impact your web presence, digital meetings, employees, or stakeholder communications, we recommend checking out some of these resources:

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