At the Solving Web Accessibility: Leaving No One Behind webinar from 3Play Media, David Berman spoke about why accessibility is important, the kinds of disabilities/online challenges people face, how to learn about web accessibility, and shared easy-to-implement tips for improving web accessibility.
Berman, an international expert in web accessibility standards and author of Do Good Design, has 30 years of experience in design and strategic communications. He heads up David Berman Communications, with offices in Ottawa and Toronto, Canada.
Here are my notes from the webinar:
Why Should We Care About Online Accessibility
Five reasons you should care:
- We want to include everyone. Ours is the first generation of humans where it’s possible to include everyone in communications.
With 7 billion people on Earth, that’s a lot of people. And of those 7 billion people, a substantial number will have disabilities.
What to consider as a disability: blind, hard of hearing, color deficit, trouble seeing things from a distance, need to magnify things, carpal tunnel syndrome, wear glasses or contact lenses, pregnancy, wear a cast for more than two days.
A quick poll of people attending the webinar revealed 76% identified themselves having a disability. (I was in the 76%, since I wear glasses.)
Case study: by making the Canada Revenue Agency website more accessible, the cost of running their website went down over a $1 million.
Rather than spending $26 to field a phone call to the tax department, a person could self-serve on the website at a cost of less than six cents.
- More relevant search results. The most frequent visitor to your website is Google, which has the cognitive ability of a four-year-old.
Creating sites using web accessibility standards allows Google to better understand and index website content, resulting in better search results.
- Access for people with subtle or substantial disability. If we don’t have a website, intranet, documents, or software that allows access to everyone in the work force, we’re not likely to attract and retain the best employees for our organizations.
We don’t want to exclude people like Stephen Hawking.
- It’s the right thing to do. According to Berman, in the last 35 years, more people have been liberated by information technology than all the wars in human history.
The tools and platforms have made it possible to communicate with everyone. It’s not just sharing information with everyone; it’s that everyone can be involved in creating and sharing.
- Legislative regulations. Depending on where you live, there are different levels of accessibility expectations.
Organizations that choose to ignore online accessibility are going to become more vulnerable to legal action.
Ontario, Canada has the world’s most leading legislation for the private sector in the world. Ontario has a law (AODA–Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) that says all private sector as well as public sector and NGOs (non-governmental organization) need to have a certain minimum level of accessibility.
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/555449155343384576
Kinds of Disabilities and Online Challenges
- Permanent: blindness, deafness since birth
- Episodic: Most disabilities are temporary: broken arm, flu, eye drops, noisy place, low-light environment, distance, crutches due to sprained ankle
- Acquired: acquired as time goes on, ageing related
- Societal: left-handedness
Visual Challenges
- No sight
- See only certain frequencies of light
- Temporarily not seeing well due to smoke in a room, or dark room
Dexterity and Mobile Challenges
- Quadriplegic
- Movement, but hurts when a person moves
- Loss of limb
- Limited reach, strength, manipulation
- Arm or limb in a cast or on crutches
Language and Speech Difficulties
- Aphasia
- Delayed speech
- Lack of knowledge/skills
Hearing Difficulties
- Completely deaf
- Slight hearing loss
- Noisy room
We need to design our product/service that work for people. The ideal accessible digital world is:
- Usable by everyone
- on any user agent (browser, app, PDF/eBook reader
- on any kinds of device
- with any kind of connection
- in any kind of environment
You don’t have to be perfect. Don’t be intimidated by web accessibility guidelines. You just need to get started.
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/555440972134625280
Perfect Time to Learn Web Accessibility
It’s never been easier to create online accessibility, accessible websites, and accessible documents. In past years, web accessibility courses would take two days. Now they’re only one-day courses.
Before you learn to fix things, you need to understand the challenge of what you’re dealing with. Learn to implement things the right way so you won’t waste time.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 are based on four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. WCAG 2.0 consists of 25 A level and 13 AA level success criteria; 38 things to know.
Quick Tips for Improving Web Accessibility
- Add alternative text. Ensure you have alternative test for website images, as well as images in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe PDFs
- Caption/add transcripts to multimedia. Doing it yourself can be time consuming and/or expensive; check out third-party providers like 3PlayMedia.
- Ensure PDFs are accessible. Use PAC (PDF Accessibility Checker), available for Mac and Windows
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/555440972134625280
Final Thoughts
When we design for an accessible web, without tradeoffs, everyone benefits. It drives down business costs, reaches more users, and it’s the right thing to do.
