Understanding Web Accessibility
What is Accessibility?
Accessibility is the ease of doing something. Be it using a door knob or using a computer. Though it relates to disabled people most of the time, this is not always the case. Accessibility helps everyone irrespective of their abilities. Specifically though, what does this mean in a digital sense?
In simple words, accessibility in the digital space means all your digital products such as a website, mobile apps, PDF documents etc should be readable, operable, and functional to all users (including disabled people). For example; a blind person should be able to book a flight and complete subsequent formalities online on their own. A deaf person should be able to attend virtual training classes and gain knowledge. A person with hand tremors should be able to perform tasks on computers using a special type of mouse or keyboard.
A few decades ago when technology was far behind what it is now, blind people were always dependent on someone else to read a newspaper to them. To wear matching clothes, they would have to ask others about the cloth color.
With advances in technology, things have changed drastically. Nowadays, blind people are not dependent on someone else to read the newspaper because they can read it online on their mobile or computer using a screen reader. They can do shopping online without the hassle of going to a shopping mall. All this is possible because of the evolution of web. It offers tremendous potential to change the lives of disabled people. In fact, the evolution of the internet has opened up enormous opportunities to everyone.
The challenge
The main hurdle for disabled people in relation to accessibility with technology is when the people who create products and services do not take into consideration their needs and also best practices set up by international organizations. These are often very simple to implement, but the lack of awareness causes issues.
At Tigerspike, we have embedded Accessibility into the DNA of our design philosophy. We consider universal design principles and ensure that the product will be usable to everyone.
Traditionally, companies did not take care in ensuring the accessibility of their digital products due to a variety of reasons including the additional cost, perceived difficulty to tackle this as well as thinking this would not provide a benefit.
However, this perception was a result of not handling Accessibility in the right manner. Even today, the trend has not changed much. The majority of companies do not address it or do not address it in right spirit.
Web Accessibility
In the last few years there has been more talk about web accessibility than ever before. Many people are becoming aware of it because of stringent laws that are being created, lawsuits that have occurred and the work done by the Web Accessibility (WAI) Initiative by W3C. For Tigerspike, ensuring that the product is accessible is the right thing to do. With tried and tested methods over years it doesn’t take a lot of effort to make a product accessibility compliant and usable to everyone.
W3C, the governing body of the Web, has initiated international guidelines for making web content accessible. Countries all over the world refer to these guidelines or derive their own guidelines based on it as part of their rights of persons with disabilities protection laws.
One such guideline is called “Web content accessibility guidelines”, commonly referred to as WCAG. The current version in effect is WCAG 2.1. It is a set of checkpoints to ensure that the content created is usable to everyone including disabled people.
At the core, WCAG has 4 principles. Principles contain a total of 13 guidelines. Guidelines in turn have 78 testable success criterias. Each success criteria is associated with a conformance level. Level A, Level AA or Level AAA.
The crux of these guidelines is that one needs to follow the respective technology best practices and take care of the special needs of certain users.
Implementation
Implementing accessibility needs commitment from management. Many times the developers and designers are not aware about Accessibility and thus do not take care of it in their work. If management ensures employees are aware about it, they will certainly do it.
Another best practice would be creating an internal policy around Accessibility and library of accessible components. Design and engineering teams benefit a lot from this.
Having an Accessibility expert in the team certainly helps. The expert can train the team on various aspects of accessibility and guide them to successful implementation. The expert can help the team in learning the assistive tools which are used by disabled people, solving queries, coming up with innovative solutions to solve design issues. The expert can also create a repository of accessible components.
When creating websites for our customers we apply accessibility best practices. Our teams know how to navigate through the web using a screen reader and other assistive technologies. Designers are aware about how small modifications in the design can make it usable to everyone. Accessibility training is part of many of our new joiners’ inductions so that they blend seamlessly into our overarching design philosophy.
An accessibility expert creates accessibility acceptance criteria by referring to the wireframes. This criteria contains technical details about how each and every element could be made accessible. The Engineering team refers to it and implements accessibility accordingly.
The biggest advantage we have is that management is sensitized towards Accessibility and understands the importance of it. This makes our lives easy as we do not need to get buy in for Accessibility internally. All these factors contribute to building awesome accessible solutions.
As a whole, we make implementing accessibility easy and simple by starting it early in the project. Understanding the guidelines thoroughly and thus providing a feasible solution that satisfies all the parties involved is a big reason for a successful project delivery.
Laws
There are various national and international laws on Accessibility. These laws are broadly categorized into:
Civil law
These laws protect discriminations against disabled people. It takes care of issues such as equal employment opportunity, making public places such as restaurants and shopping malls more accessible. An example of this type of law is: the Americans with Disability Act (ADA).
Procurement law
These laws require the Federal agencies to buy products which are accessible. If one needs to choose from three available options, one being accessible and others are not, the Federal Agency will preferably buy the one that is accessible. EN 301 549 and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act are a few examples of procurement laws.
Industry specific law
At times the government writes laws just for a specific industry. Examples of such laws, specific to the USA, are the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) and the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA).
Benefits
Equal opportunity
Web is used by many organizations and governments officially to offer services and products. It is used in education, commerce, news, healthcare and many other places. In some cases, the Web is replacing traditional resources and service delivery.
The Web is an important medium for receiving information as well as for providing information and interacting with society. Therefore, it is essential that the Web is accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to disabled people.
Interoperability
Since accessibility follows technology best practices, accessible content would be better operable on different type of devices.
Site maintenance
Since the code would be clean, maintaining it would be easy. This would enable content on different configurations, and ensuring readiness for advanced web technologies.
Potential untapped market
There is a potential market which could be catered to. The uptake of students to college may be affected by the the study material not being accessible. Just making the PDF and e-learning accessible would mean that even users with special needs can also be taken care of to a certain extent.
Law
Stay away from legal risk and negative publicity. This is one of the major reasons why many companies make their websites accessible.
Conclusion
To summarise all, it is very important for everyone involved in a project to be sensitized towards the needs of disabled people, understand their problems and then create feasible solutions which are accessible to everyone. This in turn will help in catering to an untapped market with robust solutions which are inclusive and pretty flexible to work on a variety of devices.
The Mantra to making web content accessible is to:
- Educate the client on Accessibility
- Understand the guidelines thoroughly
- Know how people with disabilities use assistive technology
- Start implementing Accessibility at every stage of the project
- Test frequently
- Do not underestimate Accessibility
