Making a commitment to digital inclusion
When I was at 18F, I was proud of the team’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. We created an Accessibility Guide — you can read about how we applied it to our work on the 18F blog. We created Web Design Standards, to help our colleagues across government create better experiences for people. And as an organization, we were committed to understanding how 18F itself could create space for employment among those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. Including diverse voices from a range of communities, geographies, and realities is critical to understanding the populations we serve.
So, I’m equally proud that inclusivity is also core to the work of the Ontario Digital Service. It’s so important to us, we’re partnering with the Public Policy Forum to host the Digital Inclusion Summit taking place February 9–10.
Tickets have sold quickly for this event, which will focus on bringing diverse communities of people together, across sectors, to get down into the details of how we can develop strategies for action and greater inclusion. I’m looking forward to hearing from practitioners and community members about their research, insights, and experiences. Most importantly — to advancing the conversation, together.
At ODS, we’re excited to help spearhead this important dialogue, to listen and learn. To give you a sense of how we’re promoting inclusion, we’ve been active in championing and delivering:
- User-centered design: We talk to real people — users of our services and those who create, administer, and support them, too. We ask lots of questions that help us understand how people interact with information, or a product or service, so that we can remove barriers and make the experience as good as possible.
- Accessibility and inclusive design: We design online services to meet the needs of many, but that starts with understanding those who are often forgotten or may exist along the edges of a community. All users ought to be able to access and use our services. We’ve introduced a Digital Service Standard to emphasize inclusive design and accessibility, and we’ll keep working hard to ensure that online services are built with these design principles from the start.
- Plain language: Making content — the words we use and how we organize them online — as simple as possible helps open up services and information to the widest possible audience. It makes it easier for the public to read, understand, and use government services when we work to make it scannable and accessible, across devices.
We’re active and engaged in this space; but we know there’s more to do. There are still people who are excluded, and we need to keep working to remove barriers to inclusion. The Summit gives us a platform to continue this important work, and to amplify the work of others — bringing those worlds and people from all spheres of life together.
If you missed out on tickets, we hope you’ll be able to join the conversation online — be sure to follow the conversation at #InclusionON or check DigitalInclusion.ca to catch a live stream of both days of the event.
