Digital Accessibility: Why YOU should care

Accessibility has become something of a buzzword in the industry, and for those just getting started in their accessibility journey, it can feel overwhelming. The most important thing to remember is that accessibility is about giving users access to information without barriers.

In the rest of this piece, I’ll share the nitty-gritty details to learning more about accessibility, who it’s for, the lessons I’ve learned and how you can successfully integrate it into your business.

Who is accessibility for?

When it comes to who accessibility is for… It’s for everyone. Accessibility, at its core, is about giving people access to information without barriers, but NOT having an accessible website or digital asset means that you are directly excluding groups of people who face impairments or disabilities, some of which include:

• Physical

• Visual

• Auditory

• Cognitive

Physical barriers could mean that their hand shakes and they have a hard time clicking on a small target area. This could also range to those who can’t move their body at all and need to use speech recognition software to navigate a website.

Visual barriers could be from poor contrast or small text size for those with low vision, to being completely blind, and the website needing to be accessible for a screen reader.

Auditory barriers could be a lack of captions or sign language on a video.

There are also cognitive needs to consider, like those who are neurodivergent. For example, 1 in 10 people have Dyslexia which could mean that certain fonts are harder for them to read (there are a variety of needs beyond just font to consider, too).

You’ll also come across those who might be temporarily disabled, i.e. they’ve broken their arm or someone who is situationally impaired, i.e. trying to hold a child while doing something on their phone or laptop.

These are just a few barriers, but it’s essential to consider how people might use your digital platform, and the only way to know for sure is to ask people and test your product.

Test with real people

As a user researcher, my whole job is about thinking about the people who will use the digital service I am working on… who are they? What do they need? What are their goals? How might they use this website?

Then I need to do user research to understand behaviours, motivations and barriers.

It’s important to include those with impairments and disabilities as part of your user research, as “nothing about us without us” (quote from the disabled activism community) states. If you don’t include them, then you’re simply making assumptions, and you’d be surprised at the diverse ways people will access your digital platform.

Accessibility is good for business

Accessibility in itself creates more harmonious user experiences for all users and helps extend your market reach.

The Office for National Statistics reported that 1 in 5 people have a form of special need, impairment, or health condition. This would be the same as walking away from 20% of your business pitches/meetings /opportunities.

By focusing on accessibility, not only are you saying yes to 100% of your audience, but this will lead to greater conversations, loyalty and engagement from a wider audience, including those with limited attention, multitasking or situational limitations, as well as the 20% who identify as having a disability.

Integrating accessibility into design, development and content

So.. whose responsibility is it in an organisation to make sure that the digital experience is accessible? Everyone.

Some key players are content designers, UX designers and researchers, developers, product owners, and senior management.

It is important to shift our thinking from accessibility being a standalone service or an extra consideration. It should be baked into how we write content, design, run research, and write code. It is not a separate thing but is encompassed in doing our jobs well and with excellence.

• Some good questions to ask yourself as you are thinking about your digital experience:

• Who would this pose a barrier to?

• What potential barriers would this create?

• Is there anything in this that would make it difficult to access or understand?

• How can we start creating a pool of users with a variety of abilities?

In the digital experiences that you're creating, remember to test as you go, integrate accessibility into every part of the process and include real users as much as possible.

Good content is accessible content. Good code is accessible code. Good design is accessible design. Collaborate, ask questions and try not to feel overwhelmed by what you don't know yet. We are all still learning.