Digital accessibility: where companies go wrong and how to fix it
Digital accessibility refers to the design and development of digital products, such as websites, mobile apps and electronic documents, so that all users can easily use and interact with them, including users with disabilities. For example, developers provide alternative text for images for visually impaired users, add subtitles to videos for hearing-impaired users, and enable people with motor disabilities to navigate websites using only a keyboard.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a comprehensive set of digital accessibility standards published by the Web Accessibility Initiative and the World Wide Web Consortium. These guidelines provide the fundamental benchmark against which digital accessibility is measured. WCAG consists of thirteen guidelines organized around the four principles that web content should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust for users with disabilities.
These principles and the resulting checkpoints form the basis for three levels of compliance with the standards: A, AA and AAA. The A level is the minimum level of compliance, AA is the standard for most websites and AAA is the highest level of compliance. The criteria for each rating are cumulative, meaning that products must fully meet the A requirements to be considered AA, for example.
Vice President of Solution Delivery and Accessibility at Applause.
Only one part of the photo
However, digital accessibility guidelines such as WCAG are only part of the picture. As digital interactions become increasingly integral to our lives, companies must do more for ethical, legal and practical reasons. WCAG should be viewed as the floor and not the ceiling when it comes to building accessible applications. The best brands go beyond compliance and strive for true inclusivity, recognizing that features designed for accessibility can significantly improve the user experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities.
This focus on inclusivity is important because according to the World Health Organization, an estimated 1.3 billion people, or 16% of the world’s population, experience significant disabilities. These disabilities include a wide range of conditions including low vision, mobility, hearing, neurological, cognitive, medical and psychological issues, all of which face unique digital accessibility challenges.
The Paris Olympics included 329 events in 35 locations, all streamed live, making it essential that the games were accessible to everyone. That said, NBCUniversal led the way in Olympic accessibility coverage by including features such as enhanced closed captioning, expanded audio descriptions, and improved accessibility of digital content. This implementation set a new standard for the Games and raises the bar for inclusive, year-round broadcasting.
Despite these efforts, people with disabilities still face significant digital accessibility barriers in their daily lives that hinder their ability to fully participate. From inaccessible mobile login portals to completing electronic documents, the challenges are endless and highlight the urgent need for continued improvements in accessibility.
Know your customer
Developers can’t create great user experiences by reading guidelines and standards. Especially when it comes to creating truly inclusive products, success starts with talking to people with disabilities (PwD). Enable teams to communicate with and understand people with dementia, whether they have visual, hearing or mobility impairments, in both the design and testing phases of projects. This is not only good practice, it is a necessity for creating truly inclusive digital products. Including all voices in design and implementation is a source of innovation to design products better.
Also, more and more companies are implementing empathy labs, but fail to recognize that these simulations are not an adequate replacement for dealing with PwD. Empathy labs, which aim to simulate different disabilities through interactive experiences designed to help people better understand and empathize with the challenges PwD face, often fall short in capturing the full spectrum of these challenges.
While building empathy labs is a good step for companies, it is highly recommended to involve PwD at every stage of the software development cycle to hear and engage them directly. It’s a way to work directly with them instead of trying to walk in their shoes. Integrating feedback from lived experiences into the product design process quickly gets to the point when making product decisions.
Empower your teams
Companies that excel at delivering quality digital experiences for people with dementia have created a culture of inclusivity by making accessibility an operational priority. They strive to continually educate developers on accessibility best practices. They can ask simple questions like how often developers think about accessibility and how much they already know before investing in the training needed to fill the gaps.
Part of this means ensuring that developers recognize the need for an ongoing accessibility testing program, rather than seeing accessibility as a box to be ticked when convenient. Regularly testing digital products for accessibility should use multiple tools, including automated and manual testing and user testing with people with disabilities. It also means we maintain an ongoing commitment to accessibility by regularly reviewing and updating digital products to ensure they remain accessible as technologies and standards evolve.
Creating digitally accessible content
The post-COVID shift to delivering digital-first experiences, where digital platforms and tools are the primary means of interaction, has made digital accessibility more of a priority than ever – and improvements still need to be made. Digital accessibility requires an ongoing commitment to building inclusive experiences, starting in the product development and code writing phases. Most importantly, design and testing require input from people with intellectual disabilities, without whom truly inclusive digital experiences are unachievable.
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